Democratic strategist James Carville identified Wednesday what he believes is costing his party at the polls: “Stupid wokeness.”
“What went wrong is just stupid wokeness,” he told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff when she asked what happened Tuesday in Virginia, where Democratic gubernatorial incumbent Terry McAuliffe went down to Republican Glenn Youngkin. “This ‘defund the police’ lunacy, this ‘take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools.’ I mean that … people see that.”
He explained that what he sees as wokeness “has a suppressive effect all across the country on Democrats.”
“Some of these people need to go to a ‘woke’ detox center or something,” he said. “They’re expressing a language that people just don’t use and there’s backlash and a frustration at that.”
Youngkin, who did not run ads attacking Democratic President Joe Biden, won in suburban areas of Virginia where former president Donald Trump did not win in 2020. Both of these facts were used on the Wednesday program to highlight how local and individualized Youngkin’s strategy was. According to Carville, Youngkin “let the Democrats pull the pin and watched the grenade go off.”
While the Republican challenger won in Virginia, the Democratic incumbent in the New Jersey gubernatorial race eked out a win after voters headed to the polls this week. Phil Murphy will remain governor of New Jersey over Jack Ciattarelli.
Watch above, via PBS News.