U-Turn by Establishment as Corporate Dem Guru Carville Pushes 'Platform of Pure Economic Rage'

James Carville, a one-time political strategist for former President Bill Clinton who has long sparred with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, turned some heads on Monday when he appeared to embrace a more populist economic vision.

Writing in the New York Times, Carville argued that the American people "are pissed" by the state of the US economy, and that Democrats must now "run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression."

"It is time for Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic, and altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage," Carville added. "This is our only way out of the abyss."

While Carville then took a shot at the "era of performative woke politics from 2020 to 2024," which he said "left a lasting stain on our brand, particularly with rural voters and male voters," he said that Republicans' total failure to address the affordability crisis has given Democrats a second chance to win them back with bold economic populism.

"In the richest country in the history of our planet, we should not fear raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour, which had a 74% approval rating in 2023," he said. "We should not fear an America with free public college tuition, which 63% of US adults favored in a 2021 poll. When 62% of Americans say their electricity or gas bills have increased in the past year and 80% feel powerless to control their utility costs, we should not fear the idea of expanding rural broadband as a public utility. Or when 70% of Americans say raising children is too expensive, we should not fear making universal childcare a public good."

Taken together, the longtime centrist Democratic strategist declared that "the era of half-baked political policy is over."

Progressives who have long advocated for more economic populism cautiously welcomed Carville's new approach, although they expressed skepticism that the Democratic Party was really ready to go in this direction.

"The Democratic Party has to decide if they will let folks build that table," wrote former Democratic Ohio state Sen. Nina Turned on X. "For too long, the party has done everything to hurt the populist movement."

David Sirota, founder of The Lever and one-time senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign, noted with amusement that Carville's recommendations to Democrats had changed dramatically over the last few months.

Specifically, Sirota pointed to a editorial Carville wrote for the Times back in February where he recommended that the party "roll over and play dead," while waiting for President Donald Trump and the GOP to inevitably implode from self-inflicted errors.

"He's gone from demanding Dems play dead to demanding Dems be Bernie Sanders," Sirota observed. "A good reminder that thumb-in-the-wind politicos with no principles will change their tune when others do the hard work of shifting the political environment."

Gun violence prevention activist David Hogg, on the other hand, took the Carville op-ed as a hopeful sign that "times are changing."

Climate advocate and attorney Aaron Regunberg also saw signs that Carville's op-ed marked a turning point in Democratic Party conventional wisdom.

"It really is starting to feel like economic populists have won the debate," he argued. "Our haters have become our waiters—time for us to all build a table of success for the Democratic Party."