James Carville: Defund the Police Movement ‘Terrible Drag’ on Democrat Party

Appearing Thursday on Conversations with Bill Kristol, veteran Democrat strategist James Carville expressed concern about the “Defund the Police” movement’s impact on the Democrat Party, calling it a “terrible drag.”

A transcript is as follows: 

BILL KRISTOL: Let’s talk about the Republicans for a minute. I still want to get back to the Democrats, but I guess I have the slightly opposite inclination, which is, I don’t know, every time some candidate has 57% at this stage, early as it is, who is well-known and has held high office before, he or she seems to win the nomination, whether it’s Biden, or Hillary Clinton, or Romney and McCain who had lost the two previous times. And there’s such a tendency to — and he still dominates half the party. And so isn’t he still the most likely nominee in 2024? And isn’t his endorsement still going to be a huge plus for people in 2022? And doesn’t that mean we still have a Trumpy Republican party?

JAMES CARVILLE: Okay. Let’s say, all right, 57, you say that’s not a good number. The number was 89, three months ago.

KRISTOL: Yeah.

CARVILLE: That was not going in the right direction. And then, of that 57, it’s something, but I mean, to have a hammer lock on it like he had before, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Plus he’s getting older and he doesn’t have the same access. And we got to see where the Republicans are, but they might be where the Democrats were in 2020: “Shit, let’s just win. Like, okay, this is okay. So the guy is old. Okay. Who cares? We got to win. Doesn’t matter about the age. [Inaudible] Nope, got to be for Biden. He’s the one that has the best chance for winning.” Had it turned out that we would have nominated someone else, Trump would probably still be president.

KRISTOL: Do you agree with that? I’ve discussed that with other people, Biden, probably the only Democrat who beats Trump, the way things turned out in 2020?

CARVILLE: Could be. This defund the police was just a terrible drag on the Democratic party. It really was. Don’t kid yourself. And then they brought Biden, but easy to get sucked into that. And that had a lot to do with why we didn’t do as well as we wanted to.

But of course he’s still a big presence. I just think right now he’s less of a presence than I would have thought in November. And I don’t see it getting, it will be harder for it to go up than it is to go down. It’s going to be very hard.

[H/T conversationswithbillkristol.org]