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Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said Republicans are better at pushing positive and negative narratives than Democrats on Thursday and warned his party that its 2028 nominee will need that skill to win.
Carville has frequently condemned the Trump administration, predicting that 2026 will be a year of landmark victories for the Democratic Party. He has suggested multiple times that President Donald Trump, after presumably losing political power in the midterms, may resign from office early and be pardoned by Vice President JD Vance after Vance becomes president.
One listener, however, contacted Carville and his co-host Al Hunt on their “Politics War Room” podcast, juxtaposing how Republicans and Democrats talk about each other.
“He wants to know why the Republicans are so much better than the Democrats at creating boogeymen,” Hunt summarized. “Republicans will paint all Democrats with a socialist brush, yet Democrats can’t seem to do the same thing when it comes to racism, antisemitism or corruption, despite the fact that all three are prevalent among Republican members of Congress.”
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James Carville suggested that Republicans have ruined their reputation so badly they may not even need Democrats to undermine their reputation right now, having done it themselves. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Politicon)
“The gist of the question is Republicans are very good at painting Democrats as boogeymen, socialists, communists, all that kind of stuff,” Hunt continued. “But the Democrats don’t do as good a job, Rob worries, about painting Republicans with their racism, antisemitism, etc.”
Carville argued that the Republicans are doing so badly they may not even need the Democrats to condemn them.
“First of all, it is a good question,” Carville replied. “Secondly, what’s happened now is they’re painting themselves that way, OK? They’re going down not because of Democratic messaging, not because of a relentless offense by the Democrats that, you know, points out their foibles. They’re going down because the public sees it, and they don’t need that. A Democratic intervention right now is not called for.”
Carville said that the Democratic nominee will need to master this skill to win in 2028.
“The gist of the question from our listener is totally correct. And for whatever reasons, Ben [sic], I think it’s because we’re more of a coalition. Not only do we not have a consistent negative story to tell about the other party, we don’t have a consistent positive story to tell about ourselves,” he said. “Hope and pray that in 2028 we have a really skilled candidate that’s able to do that.”
“But that is a fact of American politics,” he added. “We’re not as good as they are at the negative, and we’re not as good as they are at a positive.”
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James Carville said that Republicans are better than Democrats right now at pushing both positive and negative narratives. (Politicon)
Mary Marslender, a former senior advisor to Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and a former Trump appointee who is now a Republican consultant, said there is a disparity in how well each side uses that rhetoric against the other.
“It isn’t even close, and it isn’t the disparity Carville thinks it is,” she told Digital. “When Republicans label Democrats as socialists, it’s not just empty rhetoric; it’s grounded in how many Democrats describe themselves. Recent polling found that 59 percent of Democrats identify as supporters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).”
“The DSA has openly advocated for policies such as court-packing, sweeping changes to financial institutions, the abolition of capitalism, open borders, eliminating prisons and the Senate, and expanding administrative power. The Democratic Party has embraced socialism, and there seems to be no turning back,” Marslender continued.
However, she disagreed with Carville’s comment that Republicans have already destroyed their own reputation without Democratic help.
“Carville’s claim is more political spin than reality,” Marslender said. “If Republicans had truly destroyed their own credibility, Democrats would not need Carville’s advice to ‘sit this one out.’ In fact, Carville reveals the Democratic Party’s real problem: they lack both a compelling message and a strong messenger, and are now hoping for a ‘really skilled candidate in 2028.’”
“A party that has watched the Trump administration deliver on border security, energy independence, and prioritizing American workers cannot credibly claim that Republicans have already undermined themselves,” she continued. “If Republicans were as self-destructive as Carville claims, Democrats wouldn’t be waiting for a future savior; they would already be capitalizing on Republicans’ so-called failures. Carville’s argument underscores that Democrats still recognize weaknesses in their own positioning and strategy.”
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James Carville warned that the 2028 Democratic nominee will need to know how to criticize the opposition and tout the Democratic Party’s own message. (Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SCAD)
Julian Epstein, an attorney, Democratic consultant and former Democratic chief counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, said some of Carville’s comments were “delusion.”
“Some of this is progressive delusion,” he said. “For the last decade, Democrats, in non-stop fashion, have sought to commodify rage by calling Trump a fascist, deriding Trump’s attempt to stop a Nazi movement in the Mideast, and blaming him for a cost-of-living crisis that Democrats mostly authored under Biden’s 20% cumulative inflation. Most of what Democrats do today is name-calling.”
“Democrats failure to tell a ‘positive story’ is not a communications problem, it’s a philosophy problem,” Epstein added. “It dismays many of us centrists, but the left’s program today is almost entirely identity grievance and tax-and-spend redistributionist big government, which appeals to, at most, 25% of voters — about the same low number of voters that actually identify as Democrats today.”
“Democrats have forgotten how to build,” he continued. “They have forgotten that the story of America is one of innovation, invention and discovery, not resentment and big government bureaucracies.”
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“At the same time, it is also true that the GOP is squandering its 2024 mandate,” Epstein added. “Its tripping over itself with badly designed tariffs, has failed to show in a forward-looking manner that building new housing and increasing competition in health insurance can cure a lot of the affordability problem, and has failed to explain that we are fighting a KKK-like ideology in the Mideast. Unlike the Democrats’ philosophy problem, the GOP has a yawning communications’ problem.”
