James Carville: Mock Him

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Speaker 2 Hello, and welcome to the Borg Podcast. I'm Tim Miller.
It's a happy Mardi Gras day here in New Orleans. We've got the appropriate guest from Mardi Gras, as you might imagine.

Speaker 2 But we have a little bit of news. So tonight, we have the New York 3 special election.
It's the George Santos seat.

Speaker 2 A former Democratic congressman, Tom Swazi, is running against an unknown Republican Mozzie Pillip, who Joe Perticone wrote about in his Press Pass newsletter recently, which you should check out.

Speaker 2 She is kind of MAGA, kind of a just blank slate, has not been pinned down on a lot of issues. But Democrats have done really well in special elections.

Speaker 2 That's something that we're going to talk to James Carville about. Other big news last night was the Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan national security bill passed 70 to 29 in the Senate, 48 Democratic votes.

Speaker 2 22 Republican votes. And this is big news.
We get to the House next where Mike Johnson has said that he will not bring this up, but his majority is so slim. There are some creative ways around this.

Speaker 2 And that's something that we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks. And I guess I'm going to say, in the words of Dumb and Dumber, we're saying there's a chance.

Speaker 2 There's a chance for the Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan bill, which would be super important and buy a lot of time for our friends, particularly in Ukraine.

Speaker 12 All right.

Speaker 2 So we've got a good one ahead of you. Unfortunately, this is a podcast, so we do not have closed captioning.

Speaker 2 So you might want to put it at 0.75 speed just to make sure you're keeping up with all of the gems that James Carville is dropping. Rapid fire.
It is going to be fun.

Speaker 2 We will see you back here tomorrow for a more sober-minded podcast on Ash Wednesday. Up next, James Carville.
But first, my buddies at Galactic with a little carnival music.

Speaker 2 nickel on our

Speaker 2 button.

Speaker 2 We could get together now and drink up some wine.

Speaker 2 Oh, because

Speaker 2 it's gonna

Speaker 2 put time.

Speaker 2 Oh, God, it's gonna

Speaker 2 wine.

Speaker 2 Right now, it's gonna put time. Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast.
Those are my pals at Galactic. It's Mardi Gras Day, so obviously I got James Carville.
James, thanks so much for doing it.

Speaker 12 You know, Tim, a fellow in New Orlean and Tiger fan, can you say no? We got to do it. Nobody follows my fashion trends, okay? I didn't know I was a trend.

Speaker 2 You know what everybody was sending me this week? I want to start with this. So I wore the, you know, I guess it's like the basic, the basic Ken Mardi Gras shirt.

Speaker 2 You know, it's the rugby shirt with the Mardi Gras colors. I wore it on TV to be in the street the other day, and everybody sends me this clip where you're wearing it from the war room.

Speaker 12 I just want to, let's just play it for them, real quick. There's a simple doctrine: outside of a person's love,

Speaker 12 the most sacred thing that they can give is their labor. And somehow or another along the way, we tend to forget that.

Speaker 12 And labor is a very precious thing that you have.

Speaker 12 And anytime that you can combine labor with love,

Speaker 12 you've made a merger.

Speaker 2 James, you're talking about the love and the labor. And it seems like you're feeling that right now.
You've got this YouTube page. You are out there.

Speaker 2 You are talking about young men's sexual frustration. You're talking about Donald Trump having syphilis.
You're talking about how we need to talk about how he stinks.

Speaker 2 Talk to me about how you're uniting your labor and your love right now in this phase of your career.

Speaker 12 Well, for 16 years, I taught. once a week and it helped focus me so i don't teach anymore because just too much trouble and I'm on the road a lot.

Speaker 12 So I started doing these YouTube videos and it's kind of therapeutic and it gives you a little time to explain

Speaker 12 what you're trying to say.

Speaker 12 And I try to do it as much as I can, you know, with humor is a kind of backdrop, if you will, but to try to explain to people just how screwed up things are in the country and

Speaker 12 just what a uniquely,

Speaker 12 I don't know what kind of character Donald Trump is, but I haven't gotten an adjective that can quite fit him yet. But I'm struggling, Tim.
I'm struggling.

Speaker 2 Well, you're not struggling that much.

Speaker 2 I mean, I liked, I don't know if it was your latest, but one of your recent videos, you went on a rant I don't completely agree with that basically talked about what we've been doing in countering Trump is not really working.

Speaker 2 I guess my counter to that is like, well, I mean, he'sn't won an election in eight years, but he's still around. So it's not working as well as we'd hoped.
I guess we could agree on that.

Speaker 2 And the case that you went forth is you're watching Animal House House and you decided, you tell the people, what have you decided? We need to start doing.

Speaker 12 So you're right. He stays at the kind of same level.
Yeah. Or he actually went from 46 to 47 between 2016 and 2017, which is kind of the same thing.
And we tried everything.

Speaker 12 You know, we tried his policy, his hypocrisy, his criminality, his predatory. attitude toward women, his deadbeat, didn't pay bills.

Speaker 12 So he's going to say if Russia can bomb somebody that doesn't pay the NATO bill, this guy can't pay cash with a cosigner. Okay.
He didn't pay anybody in his life.

Speaker 2 He doesn't pay his plumber.

Speaker 12 He doesn't pay anybody. He doesn't pay anybody.
So my point is, he's at a level, but it doesn't get any worse. Actually, in the head-to-head, he's doing slightly better.

Speaker 12 And we've thrown everything at him. And so I was in Adam Wiles.
I was watching it. And they said, what's called for here is a really futile and stupid gesture.

Speaker 12 And the guy says, yeah, we're just the guys to do it.

Speaker 12 And I think that by mocking him and making fun of him over a period of time,

Speaker 12 that a lot of his supporters are vested in him as this sort of flawed sent by God, King Cyrus, King David kind of figure.

Speaker 12 And my point is, is King Cyrus, King David, to our knowledge, didn't have syphilis,

Speaker 12 but didn't shit the diaper.

Speaker 12 I think that so much of this is theological. I really do think.
So much of his supporters, he's viewed as a somewhat theological figure as much as a political figure.

Speaker 2 I also liked your little bit about a multiple choice question about the last year Trump saw his dick. I appreciated that.

Speaker 2 I do want to get back to the NATO part in the foreign policy and do a little serious talk, but just while we're talking strategy, Mike Johnson, this guy, and you've done a lot on him, talk about theological Christian nationalism.

Speaker 2 I've been thinking about this. I know that this is counterintuitive in some ways since, like, Trump is the bigger figure and Trump has all these flaws.

Speaker 2 Like, how could being tied to Mike Johnson hurt Trump? But I've started to develop a theory that I think it could.

Speaker 2 Like, in the same way that back when I was a Republican, we used to tie everybody to all your people to Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco values, you know,

Speaker 2 and like Mike Johnson is a Christian nationalist weirdo. And you've like leaned into this.
Well, he's fucking weird. Like, nobody thinks Trump is that much of a zealot, right, on these issues.

Speaker 2 And so, like, I think that a lot of these young men, you talk about young black men, young white men, listening to Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughan, that like, you know, kind of think it's funny to be for Trump.

Speaker 2 Is there not a way that we could start a campaign advertising to those people about how Mike Johnson is going to be inside their bedroom monitoring their porn usage if the Republicans win everything next year?

Speaker 2 Might that not be more useful at this point than going after Trump?

Speaker 12 Well, you have to explain to people what Christian nationalists do. And they say, well, James, you're Christian.
Okay. You know, you wear the flag.
You know, you're Christian nationalists.

Speaker 12 I said, no, no.

Speaker 12 And you got to explain who these people are. And they're everywhere.
Right.

Speaker 12 And it's a weird, I mean, like, Jesus gave the Constitution to James Madison, and the First Amendment is only there to protect Christians. I mean, it's, but they have money, and Trump.

Speaker 12 gets elected he's going to turn the government over to him they're going to sit down and make a deal you steal whatever you want. Okay.
You amass all the power you want. Right.

Speaker 12 And we're going to fill the government up.

Speaker 12 And the answer is, well, that's never going to get a majority of the votes. What we know is you don't even need a majority.
You really don't need with all these multiple candidates.

Speaker 12 You know, remember, I said Hitler got 33%. They said, well, James, you can't compare anything to Hitler.
What's some supposed to forget that 1933 to 1945 ever existed?

Speaker 12 There's no lessons to learn there. There's nothing to remember.
We just ought to eradicate that, erase that, white it out from history. And I don't think you can do that.

Speaker 12 And the lesson is you don't need close to a majority. Look at the Supreme Court.
For sure, Clarence Thomas is, I don't know, Leto, Barrett, maybe,

Speaker 12 you know, but it's just so crazy.

Speaker 12 And so few people understand it.

Speaker 12 And Johnson is, he's all embedded in that crazy crap. And it came through Woody Jenkins, it came through Tony Perkins, it came through Paul Pressler, Greg Cron.

Speaker 12 And the more that you study it and look at it, the more you thought, this sounds weird. People are going to think I'm goddamn crazy, but it's a real threat.
It's a real, real ass threat.

Speaker 2 It is a real threat. We've done well.
There's not a whole lot of juice left in the orange and the college-educated suburban crowd, right?

Speaker 2 There's a few more people that we can win over that were freaked out by January 6th, and we got to still continue to to push i always talk about the husbands of the wives that have been wagging their finger at them for eight years like we can pull a couple more of those college educated white guys reading the wall street journal over but getting into the non-college number either working class whites or working class voters of color like the trump is going to be a dictator thing for whatever reason it's not scaring them And that's why I was interested in your strategy about mocking him.

Speaker 2 I think that could work. And I also think that in some ways, Mike Johnson scares them more, right? Like this Christian nationalist stuff, right?

Speaker 2 Like, and that's why Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, you know, ran way below the Trump number in Pennsylvania, because it's like that weirdo Christian nationalist stuff is way scarier to these working class voters than kind of our high-minded talk about liberal democracy, which I care about.

Speaker 2 And I think that's the play with regards to Johnson.

Speaker 12 So during our time on opposing parties, there was a kind of unwritten rule. Children are not combatants in any kind of way.

Speaker 12 Yeah, you can put it in an ad and you're walking through the fall leaves with King Timahoe and, you know, you throw a stick and that, that's fine.

Speaker 12 And you can have, you know, little Ashley and Jason, whatever you got.

Speaker 12 Then, you know, your daughter, no one would like talk about your daughter like publicly or say anything because that's your business and who cares and my children the same way.

Speaker 12 He puts his children front and center. He takes a 13-year-old girl.
and publicly puts her signing a purity pledge with him standing next to her.

Speaker 12 And the research shows that these females that do this, it messes them up.

Speaker 12 Then he and the son, who's 17, monitor each other's computers with something called covenant eyes to make sure that neither one is watching porn.

Speaker 12 And if he's trying to keep that kid from jacking off, I'm going to tell you, dude, it ain't going to work. He might not lose the battle.

Speaker 12 The world is over 6 million trying to do that. I think more than 6 million, but yeah.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 12 He is a weird, weird figure. He's been shaped by weird people.

Speaker 12 And that Bosch Parish fundamental Christianity, and he says he talks to God all the time. Well, that God don't know how to count.
That God, the God of Boshe-Parish fundamentalism can't count to 218.

Speaker 12 Now, the South Louisiana, all knowing omnipotent God could count. to infinity.
But God has a lot of different people to a lot of different things. But the guy literally says,

Speaker 12 everything I believe comes out the Bible. I talk to God

Speaker 12 and I think I believe him. Yeah, right.
I don't think this is some kind of show,

Speaker 12 you know, Trump would evangelical preach almost hilarious.

Speaker 12 I think this guy is fundamentally, deeply, and profoundly

Speaker 12 screwed up. I do.
And I think this weird brand of Christianity and Christian nationalism really informs who he is.

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Speaker 2 We got to do a little news. It's the three-year anniversary of the vote to acquit Donald Trump.
And to me, this is the date, February 13th, 2021, that created all these fucking problems that we're in.

Speaker 2 Like, honestly, had 10 more Republicans had the balls to do what they wanted to do and convicted him, you know, we would have a relatively normal campaign right now between Ron DeSantis or someone like him who I don't like, and, you know, between Kamala Harris or somebody like her, because I don't know that Biden would have ran if he would have been convicted.

Speaker 2 Instead, we're what we are, what we are. And so here we are last night in the Senate.
I feel like it's a nice bookend to that. We have this vote about the aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

Speaker 2 The Senate passes it. 22 Republicans do the right thing, which is down from 39 the last time they voted on it, so it's moving the wrong direction.

Speaker 2 But is there a way to navigate this world where we just have to rely on the Democrats being the responsible ones every time.

Speaker 2 And, you know, how can you, you know, I know you're talking a lot of these Senate candidates, like message in about how it's like, it's these fucking guys' faults that we're in this situation.

Speaker 12 So the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is this. Republican voters are driving Republicans' politicians' behavior.
All right. Rubio was not.

Speaker 12 like a clown or he wasn't anything like that as he came up through Florida politics and he got the the Senate. Okay.
He was more conservative than I like.

Speaker 12 Now he's become a comical figure. And people say, why doesn't Rubio like stand up? Because Rubio is doing democracy.
He's doing exactly what the rank and file Republican want him to do.

Speaker 12 The rank-and-file Democrat does not really want Biden to run for re-election. They will vote for him.
But he's not being pushed by public opinion. Rubio is being pushed by public opinion.

Speaker 12 And there are just so many more weird people in this world than we originally thought. It's really eye-opening.
There's no path for a Jeb Bush kind of person. It's done.
It's over.

Speaker 12 And the Democrats are a lot of things, but even like the ones that I really disagree with, like the squad, I think their views are kind of naive and silly, but they're not evil.

Speaker 12 I mean, mean, they don't want to like bomb Denmark. Okay.

Speaker 2 And most of them are genuinely held. And this is the thing about why we rattle so much about Rubio, right? It's like 39 Republicans voted for Ukraine aid two years ago.
22 did last night.

Speaker 2 17 people didn't change their mind about the threat of Putin, right? 17 people just, well, 16, a couple of them lost, but umpteen people just folded.

Speaker 2 to the demands of these voters who have been pushed off the deep end by, you know, being inside Tucker Carlson media world 100% of the time.

Speaker 12 I'm sure what they would tell you if you sit down and talk to them, look, if I was the last vote, I would have voted for the eight. But man, I go to the villages and they club at me.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 Man, I don't want to listen to that shit anymore, Tim. You know, and I knew he had a cushion.
It was just a free vote. There's a difference between the 38th vote and the 51st vote.

Speaker 12 That's a million miles in politics.

Speaker 12 yeah and i suspect that's what he'd say but i've watched him when he looked at him a little bit when he first ran for the senate and man he was an impressive speaker and he had a real way that he weaved his life's narrative into what he believed yeah i mean he was a real star at one time trump has made him into just the comical figure all he is right now

Speaker 12 so Get into something you talked about earlier, about the lockdown of the suburban females and their husbands.

Speaker 12 The Democrats are hemorrhaging males, and particularly, I detest this word, but males of color.

Speaker 12 You know, you live in New Orleans. If I went and there were like three black guys on a corner, which I spoke with Chaffin Slat,

Speaker 12 and I said, hey, fellas, how are things in the community of color today?

Speaker 12 Just jive-ass motherfucker talking about it.

Speaker 2 That's a great point. Talk normal is good advice, generally.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 And so you have these academics and these high-end people that use words and tell these guys, so you're working all day changing tires in a tire shop in Kenner, but don't watch football, don't drink beer, okay, don't do all of, don't eat hamburgers, and like, this bitch lecturing to me about, and it turns them off, and we're losing.

Speaker 12 A lot of black males, not because we want to protect Social Security and Medicare. That's not the reason we're losing them.
We're not losing them because we want want Medicaid.

Speaker 12 We're losing them because you have these preachy ass people,

Speaker 12 you know, like talking down to them and telling them they have to use a language that they don't even know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 Oh, we're going to ban menthols and we're banning all this stuff. I agree with that.
That's why the Mike Johnson thing is more vulnerable.

Speaker 2 It's not half of black guys, but like to some people, that's the thing about the Trump versus Johnson thing. Like Johnson seems preaching weird.
Trump doesn't. Right.

Speaker 2 And like, that is why if they feel like it's liberal society that is lecturing them, that Trump does seem a little bit like a counter to that, which is obviously he's racist and fuck him and all that.

Speaker 2 But like that's, I think, a reasonable perception.

Speaker 12 Right. And Trump has a little bit of that man against the system F you,

Speaker 12 you know, I don't, I don't, I don't talk like other politicians.

Speaker 12 And they're not like their parents or their grandparents that grew up and formed their political persona during the civil rights movement that, you know, saw the Democratic Party be eviscerated in the South, and the few whites that ever stood up for them were actually Democrats.

Speaker 12 And they had this allegiance, but these younger people, the younger males, in particularly,

Speaker 12 all they know is NPR lecturing to them or that ilk of communities of color, BIPOC, LBGTQ. I want a letter of the alphabet.

Speaker 12 What about C-8? Coon-ass.

Speaker 12 Coonass. Everybody's got a letter of the alphabet.
I don't have one.

Speaker 2 I just solved that with the plus. I feel like with the plus, we throw everybody in.
That includes conasses. That gets everybody.
We count them all.

Speaker 12 Okay, I'll get. All right, I'll get to plus sign.
Okay. You get the plus.

Speaker 2 We're putting you in. Mike Johnson doesn't get the plus.

Speaker 12 No. All right.

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Speaker 2 It's still Mardi God Day. Who knows what you got planned? Robert Her, I got to get your take on this on two sides of it.
First, how should the Democrats mesh this report?

Speaker 2 You were pretty aggressive going after her. and I don't know.
I've been of two minds about that. It's kind of like,

Speaker 2 does that work? You know, it's one thing when James Carville's doing it, but when Democratic politicians are doing that, does that kind of feel like sour grapes?

Speaker 2 Or do you need to go on offense and turn this guy into a partisan hack? How should Democrats be handling her?

Speaker 12 Let me start by asking you a question. Yeah.
Who was the last Democratic special or independent counsel you ever heard of?

Speaker 2 Ken Starr, wasn't he a dumb?

Speaker 12 No, no, no.

Speaker 12 No, no. And that was we're going back to 1999 now we're still can't think of one it is etched in marble in washington there shall be no democratic investigations

Speaker 12 and because the republicans say well if you have a democrat we're not going to trust you and the democrats say well in order to be trusted we have to have a republic and it's like it this is all you serian catch-22

Speaker 12 okay you get you you can't even make any sense of it so he writes a support of course and merrick Garland, of course, wants to show Washington how objective he is. And so by doing that, he,

Speaker 12 you know, Rehnquist's law clerk. And so we end up here.
But what cracks me up about the Biden people, they send people out and they say, I was in a meeting with Biden and he looked fine to me.

Speaker 12 And, well, I saw him on TV. He did not look fine to me.
I'm going to believe somebody saying, well, it was a meeting of historians and they said Biden was really engaged. It was going on.

Speaker 12 I see the guy somewhere between Cairo and Mexico City.

Speaker 12 And people see that.

Speaker 12 And you can't erase that image from people's minds. And they sent a lot of people I like and I respect and are friends of mine to say, oh, no, he's just fine.

Speaker 12 And then you see the visual and you say, no, he's not.

Speaker 12 Blimobique. You know, somebody went into a White House meeting and said his questions were crisp or what I'm with my lying eyes or I'm actually watching.

Speaker 2 You brought this up. I want to circle back to her, but you brought this up.
And so I wanted to play this, you know, because we've been talking about this a little bit the last few days at the bulwark.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I've gotten some messages from some of our fans and listeners. They're like, your Republican is showing.
You're mentioning Joe Biden's age.

Speaker 2 So I want to just play a little clip from a guy that you might have heard of that's not a former Republican who had an interesting take on this subject last night.

Speaker 12 Now, Democrats will say that any criticism like this, especially of Biden, is unfair because you just don't know Biden like they know Biden.

Speaker 12 President Biden, who I've been around numerous times just in this last year, is sharp, he's focused, he's bright. He is sharp, intensely probing, and detail-oriented and focused.

Speaker 15 This is a man who is sharp, who is on top of his game, who knows what's going on.

Speaker 12 He's smart, he's on his game.

Speaker 16 I was in almost every meeting with the president, and the president was in front of and on top of it all, coordinating

Speaker 16 and directing leaders who are in charge of America's national security, not to mention our allies around the globe.

Speaker 12 Did anyone film that?

Speaker 12 Because

Speaker 12 if you're...

Speaker 12 telling us behind the scenes, he is sharp and full of energy and on top of it and really in control and leading, you should film that.

Speaker 12 That would be good to show to people.

Speaker 12 Instead of a TikTok where he goes, cookie, chick, cookie.

Speaker 12 We see he's in charge. You see, hello, cookie.

Speaker 2 Hi, James. So it is just reality.
And if Jon Stewart's seeing it, it's just reality. So what now? Like, what do you do? How do you deal with it? It's February 13th.

Speaker 2 We've got this asshole that wants to end the democracy on the other side. What does the Biden people do now?

Speaker 12 What's happening tonight?

Speaker 2 Well, I'm going to be at a Mardi Gras party.

Speaker 12 New York 3.

Speaker 2 Exactly right. How do you feel about that? Tom Swansea?

Speaker 12 I talk to people, and they're saying, well, it was just how he did this. And, you know, it's going to be bad weather and who knows what that's going to affect.

Speaker 12 The insiders don't know a hell of a lot more than the outsiders, to be frank with you. But I mean, I text the poster, I text the DCCC, I text this guy.

Speaker 2 It's snowing and Dems have done really well in kind of low turnout elections recently.

Speaker 12 We haven't lost an election since Dobbs.

Speaker 12 But if the Dem loses this, who's a very good candidate, by the way, in a district that Biden carried, it'll set off a panic. It should set off a panic.

Speaker 12 And to say 85% of the people think Biden is too low. I can't say, well, we need to pivot to the real issues.
Let's talk about it. No, his age is a real issue.
You can't pivot from it.

Speaker 12 You can't distract from it. You can't say, this is just Fox making this shit up.
You know, it's the caravan or it's, you know, somebody going.

Speaker 2 Selfie stick.

Speaker 12 Yeah, selfie stick,

Speaker 12 bathroom.

Speaker 12 You know, it's actually a legitimate issue that is on people's minds in a huge, non-plurality majority of Democrats. And you can't wish it away.
It's not going anywhere.

Speaker 2 Okay. So what do you do? And J.V.
Yellow wrote about this just in the trial out. You hang a lantern on it.
You get him out there more. He jokes about it.

Speaker 2 Or what else? What else do you do?

Speaker 12 You just make fun of Trump and scare the shit out of people. That's what you're down to.
You're down to like, if you don't do this, this is the end of the Constitution.

Speaker 12 And everybody says, I have a lot of friends. I've got to have access, James.
If I get, you know, I got my, you know, you hear some reporters, you know, I got to have access.

Speaker 12 It's going to be the United States Constitution, Perin, 1789-2027, Perin, died of access.

Speaker 12 If I say something, I'm going to get cut out. If I say something, no one's going to return my call.
If I say something, I can't get a judge.

Speaker 12 If I say something, I can't take my client to lunch at the White House. And I have to have access.
And access is killing us. Now, fortunately, I'm at a point in life, I don't give a shit.

Speaker 12 I've been to state, denotes, but I wouldn't go if you invited me. It's too much trouble.

Speaker 12 I think I'm gonna go and get that fucking airplane.

Speaker 12 But

Speaker 12 that's where we are. And so, the Democrats have decided that we're just gonna hold hands and jump off this cliff together.
And I'm like, I ain't holding your hand, dude.

Speaker 12 You go, Ed, you jump, but I'm gonna stay up here.

Speaker 12 It's been remarkable

Speaker 12 to watch this, but I do think if the Republican wins tonight, though,

Speaker 12 of course, the journalists keep covering it. The White House keeps getting mad about it, but it's actually a real story.
It's not fake.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we'll see. I don't know that that's going to be the shake-up for you.

Speaker 2 I think the Democrats win tonight. Like you said, they've won everything.
Low turnout elections, we've had this flip, right? There's a good announcement by friends at Split Ticket.

Speaker 2 Biden is winning among people that have ever voted in a midterm or a special election by four.

Speaker 2 Trump is winning with people that only show up in general elections by 10 right now, in the latest New York Times polls.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's just a total flip of how things were when you were coming up, right? With a lower propensity voters would vote Democrat, you know?

Speaker 2 And so if you have a snowy special election, it's probably going to favor the Dems.

Speaker 12 So what Democratic polls and Biden people are dealing with going forward is, well, first of all, James, no one has a 50% approval rate in politics anymore, which I think is kind of true. That's true.

Speaker 12 And Biden gets unusually high number of somewhat disapproved.

Speaker 12 So I'm looking at the latest NBC heart poll, which is the gold standard of Democratic Poll.

Speaker 12 And if you want to shut an argument down, who took the poll, you'd say heart research, and everybody said, okay, well, I attack it.

Speaker 12 See, he has a 16 strong approval and a 49 strong disapproval and a 60 disapproval. Well, you're only down to 11%.

Speaker 12 You start out with a 49 strong. So let's say you're getting one-third of 11.
Well, that's 3.2.

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 12 What the Democrats are faced with going into this cycle is a headwind unlike anything I've ever seen. And people, I don't think they're going to change their mind.

Speaker 12 You know, if you've somebody you don't know and say, well, you did the Harris Wofford race and you came back from being 48 points down. Yeah, people didn't know Harris and we introduced him, but

Speaker 12 they already know. Biden.
I don't know. It's a mess.

Speaker 2 It's one of my favorite old McLaughlin group clips. They're guessing who's going to be the VP and they're going around.
They're all shouting out names.

Speaker 12 It's like, Harris Wofford.

Speaker 2 You know, as a young person, I was like, I've never heard of any of these people. That ended up being gore.

Speaker 2 I guess if the Republic comes to an end, like you're predicting, we can do a walk down memory lane from 1992 together sometime. Okay, I want to let you go soon.

Speaker 2 I just, one last thing I want to circle back to on her.

Speaker 2 The thing that worries me is.

Speaker 2 Is the reaction to this right now? If you're the Democrats, you're already seeing this from normal Republicans, that like we shouldn't follow the rules anymore either.

Speaker 2 Like, look at at how Trump got away with this. If you're the Democrats now, Merrick Garland has us in this situation where he's appointing the Republican special counsel.

Speaker 2 He waited way too fucking long to indict Trump. Like, isn't the lesson going forward that all of this shit is crumbling and that the Democrats need to play by the same rules? And is that too cynical?

Speaker 2 Like, when I look at things, I just, I wanted James Carville's take on that.

Speaker 12 Garland. is just somebody that craves approval from legal elites.
And that's just who he is.

Speaker 12 He's one of these people that thinks, well, if I appoint a Republican, then the Republicans will like me better. That's not going to happen.

Speaker 12 So the question is, do we need to be as tough and just say what do you do, just take the page out of it?

Speaker 12 The truth of the matter is the average Democratic voter would not allow that.

Speaker 12 They just wouldn't. If a candidate just got up and said the crazy shit that Trump did and just made numbers up, actually they would report it.
and that would shake suburban college women up.

Speaker 12 They'd go, well, you know, you just can't go out and be, my God, you just can't go out. Well, I like that.

Speaker 12 That's not good for little Jeffrey. The soccer team is going to, you know, to send in the wrong signal.

Speaker 2 That's a good instinct, by the way.

Speaker 12 Yeah, but yeah. What never works is to do something to please them or think that you can move principal conservative Republicans.
You can't. There are not that many of them.

Speaker 12 It's an infinitesimal number of people.

Speaker 2 We've already gotten a lot of them, by the way.

Speaker 2 Most of that infinitesimal number has already moved. Yeah.

Speaker 12 there's one percent left yes and that's where the old you know every other word out of the republican mouth was was munich and appeasement all right well the democratic party is its version of munich and appeasement and mary garland is the ultimate appeaser to this day he thinks that he can get them to like him Or if he just shows how fair-minded he is, he doesn't open investigation or he punched no Democratic lawyers because apparently there's not.

Speaker 12 There hadn't been a Democratic special counsel in this goddamn century. And I always thought we had some pretty good lawyers on our side.

Speaker 2 That was a stereotype. All right, James.
Last thing. I'm going to let you go.
It's Mardi Grande here.

Speaker 2 So there's no sexual frustration in New Orleans. Very little, at least, on this Tuesday, February 13th.
But I was very jealous when I got the clip texted to me.

Speaker 2 I often get James Carville clips texted to me. I'm like, this is my life goals: to be, how old are you?

Speaker 12 79? 79.

Speaker 2 79? To be 79 years old on CNN with John Berman talking about,

Speaker 2 well, let's just listen to it.

Speaker 12 I think most of these people are sexually inadequate and they go for all this crazy stuff. And I don't think, and it's nothing strategic about something that's stupid.

Speaker 12 It's just real stupidity to believe something like that.

Speaker 2 James, final thoughts on the sexual frustration of young Republican men and if there's anything we can do about it?

Speaker 12 I actually believe it. All right.
And a lot of this is being driven by incels. You know what I'm saying? I went and asked some younger friends of mine, I said, what the fuck is the incel?

Speaker 12 And they said, well, it means that they

Speaker 12 involuntarily celebrate. And I said, well, does that mean like they can't get laid? Yeah.

Speaker 12 And that's coming from people

Speaker 12 who see Kelsey and they see her. She's obviously, she grew up in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
I mean,

Speaker 12 that's as middle America as you can get.

Speaker 2 Taylor Swift, too many.

Speaker 12 Yeah, Taylor Swift. Kelsey went to the University of Cincinnati.
I mean, that's hardly, it's a great school. Don't get me wrong.
It saved that guy's life, the medical school, from the bills.

Speaker 12 But that doesn't screen coastal elitism or anything like that. No.
I think that they see these young people, they're famed, they have talent, they have money, they apparently are

Speaker 12 having sex.

Speaker 12 I'm not too sure, but I suspect

Speaker 12 indications of that. And I think these people just go into a jealous rage.

Speaker 12 I really do.

Speaker 12 She's 34. She looks like she's very well raised.
She sits with his mother.

Speaker 12 Wanda Biden makes great chocolate chip cookies. I mean,

Speaker 12 this is hardly some kind of elite food.

Speaker 12 It just cracks me. When I was young boy, I was like a young teenager, and I got mad at somebody in Carville.
And I told my dad, he's just goddamn stupid, daddy.

Speaker 12 He said, son, growing up in Louisiana and being mad at stupidity is like getting mad at grass.

Speaker 12 And I changed my entire attitude as opposed to being frustrated by fools. I actually enjoy it.
My wife would say, come down, I said, James, he loves to hang out with these fools.

Speaker 12 And I do because I find him massively entertaining. I really do.

Speaker 12 And I find

Speaker 12 smart people sometimes to be almost boring. But like, tell me about this, Taylor Swift.
Now, how is this going to work out? He said, you don't understand.

Speaker 12 You're into overtime. Okay.
How many times? What's the odds of that happening? All right. And then they block an extra point.
Come on. That's all rigged as Roger Goodell is, you know,

Speaker 2 people in a bank. Joe Crystal, Lloyd Austin.

Speaker 12 Yeah,

Speaker 12 everybody's doing. Yes.
And as opposed to like, Are you fucking crazy? Yeah, tell me more. I want to know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's pick on this. I want to hear where you're going with this theory.
All right, James. Well, hopefully, your enjoyment doesn't lead to the end of our republic.
I want to bring you back.

Speaker 2 Hopefully we can find some ways to reach these fools.

Speaker 12 I think we can reach the fools.

Speaker 2 I think that's doable.

Speaker 12 We're going to try.

Speaker 2 That is going to be our challenge for the next nine months.

Speaker 12 We got to win over some of the fools. And we'll get an herb site lunch and a mosque dinner and all of the great things we've done.
All right, all right. Happy carnival.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 All right, guys. That was the great James Carville.
Always giving you the no bullshit takes. We will be back here tomorrow.
Look forward to seeing you then.

Speaker 2 The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 2 thinking.

Speaker 2 What a

Speaker 2 primer.

Speaker 2 It's called a pot.

Speaker 2 Well, it's called a pot.

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