James Carville Makes Sweeping Case For Biden to Step Aside: ‘If We Lose, We Lose the Constitution’

James Carville has led a series of campaigns to victory from way behind in the polls. Yet the legendary Democratic strategist sees no way forward for President Joe Biden . “If the people don’t want you to win, you’re not going to win. And they clearly don’t want Biden,” Carville said on this week’s episode of Mediaite’s Press Club .

On Monday, Carville published a column predicting with certainty that Biden will drop out, and detailing an audacious plan for how to move forward: four town halls across the four quadrants of the country to select a new Democratic nominee.

Carville, who joined Mediaite editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin from a cruise ship near Anchorage, Alaska, where he’s been watching the chaos of the 2024 race from the high seas, said the stakes couldn’t be higher. “If Trump wins, he will turn over everything to Christian nationalists. It’s the most insidious, dangerous, anti-American thing that I could possibly think of.”

“There’s only one hope for America, and that’s the Democratic Party. There’s no hope outside of that bucket. When you look at it you say, Goddamn, that’s an unwieldy, convoluted, constipated thing if I ever saw one. But that’s all we got.”

Carville also spoke about the Democratic donor revolt, media coverage of the current crisis for Democrats, who could take over for Biden, and what a second Trump term would look like. Mediaite’s Press Club airs in full Saturdays at 10 a.m. on Sirius XM’s POTUS Channel 124. You can also subscribe to Press Club on YouTube , Apple Podcasts , or Spotify . Read a transcript of the conversation, edited below for length and clarity.

Aidan McLaughlin: James Carville, thanks for coming on Press Club . How are you doing?

James Carville: I’m doing good. I love Mediaite, Press Club , all great.

Tell us where you are today.

I’m in Seward, Alaska, which I think is 45 minutes from the Anchorage Airport. I’m on a cruise ship called the Silver Nova, my wife and I, we took it up from Vancouver, and then we turn it around and take it back down to Vancouver, and we’re having a great time.

How is it, while the 2024 election explodes, to be out at sea?

To some extent, it’s weird. I’ll call people in Washington and say how does it feel on the ground? And they say, well the same way it feels to you, we’re all looking at the same stories. It is weird how fast technology and accessibility have become, and so I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. It is something that has never happened before ever in U.S. politics so it’s fascinating to watch it unfold.

You had a major piece drop in The New York Times this week in which you wrote, “Mark my words: Joe Biden is going to be out of the 2024 presidential race.” Tell us why you wrote this piece.

It had been building up for a long time. I always felt – because I am experienced in old age and unlike most people, I have some vague idea of what the job entails – they are just not compatible. They never will be, and I’ve been pretty consistent with that.

And the other thing I understand, because I’m in a position that most people are not, is how deep and wide the Democratic bench and the Democratic talent is around the country. And as long as President Biden is standing in the window, they can’t get any light. I’m trying to do something to get the most people the most exposure as we possibly can. And they’re there. They’re really there.

I’ve been waking up each day since the debate with a different view of whether or not Biden would exit the race. First, I thought it was a done deal. Then, when he insisted he was staying in, I swung back to thinking nothing would change. I’ve gone back and forth on that on a near daily basis until Wednesday when Nancy Pelosi said that Biden would make the right decision, which was silly because Biden has already made his decision, at least publicly. So that’s the first day I concluded Biden was not actually going to survive this. My question for you is, when did you think that this was all over for Joe Biden? When did it become apparent to you that there was just no chance that he was going to last? Because you wrote this piece earlier in the week.

21:03 hours Eastern Daylight Time. That’s 9:03, three minutes after the debate started. Well, I started getting texts, and they said “that was Daddy nine years ago,” “Oh my God, I can’t watch.” I was at the Aspen Ideas Festival and I was a little bit late, probably not more than five minutes after it started. And I looked at my texts and said, “fuck this, I ain’t watching.”

I know how this movie is going to end. Maybe he’ll do better, maybe he’ll have a good press conference at NATO — doesn’t matter.

He’s a friend of mine, Michael Bennet might be the most deliberative human being in the United States. There’s nothing about Senator Bennet that says, this guy’s going off half-cocked. I hear “God damn it, James, Schumer needs to do something.”

They are doing what they got to do. When I was a young man, a wealthy friend, he would take me Bill fishing out in the Gulf of Mexico and it takes some effort and some time to get a Marlin in the boat. But if they’re hooked well enough, they’re coming in. It’s not easy. It’s delicate. A lot of things can go wrong.

The campaign clearly thinks there’s no way he’s dropping out, or at least they’re signaling that publicly. What do you think has to happen now?

Let me say this. The athletic department has 100% confidence in a coaching staff and anybody who questions this just doesn’t know what they’re talking about. We’re ready, our football team will be ready. And then the next day, Coach decides, unbeknownst to us, to spend more time with his family. This is the same shit you see over and over.

According to what somebody just texted me, the Times is reporting that the Biden campaign is polling Harris, to see how she would do. Could I say that’s a vote of not very much confidence? It’s all so depressingly predictable.

So you have a giant fuck up. Giant. First thing, the staff. Then the media. And now it’s the elites. But what is an elite? I hear that all the time. Do I look like I’m elite? Is there anything elite about Carville, Louisiana? I don’t think there is. You ought to go take a look. Is there something elite about LSU? I don’t know. I don’t think so. But there’s just a predictable crisis — pull the staff off the shelf, pull the media off, pull the elites off. “The world doesn’t understand me.” Okay. Keep going. But I think this will run its course for sure.

NBC News just reported that a campaign official on the Biden campaign said they’re looking at the internal numbers, and there’s simply no way that he can win. There’s just no path. I think you have a lot of people who are sympathetic to Biden and the administration who are saying, at least to the campaign, show us the numbers that prove that he can actually win against Trump. And those numbers just aren’t there. People like Pelosi at least want to wait until the NATO summit is over this week.

I can understand that. That’s completely understandable.

What power do you think Democrats have to make Biden drop out when the NATO summit is over? Let’s say he doesn’t want to.

First of all — and I know this because I know a lot of them — the donors are in total revolt. You got to understand how many entities in the Democratic Party need funding: the Senatorial committee, the House Committee, the DNC, the interest groups, that entire infrastructure, and these donors are overwhelmingly saying I’m not moving until you make a change to the top.

So Hakeem’s guy calls another guy, and the guy says, you go tell Hakeem that I ain’t giving him a nickel, I’m not supporting this. So Hakeem’s guy goes to Hakeem. Schumer’s guy — more likely Schumer himself, that guy never stops — “Chuck, I love you. You’ve been a friend of mine for a long time, but I’m not going to participate in your shit.”

What did you make of Pelosi’s carefully worded comments on the matter? Did you watch her interview where she said that she hopes Biden makes the “right decision”?

I read it and it would be completely consistent with former Speaker Pelosi. That’s pretty strong.

The idea that we have six weeks until the convention, and people are saying, yeah, we got to make a charge. This is historic. And it’s staggering. It’s unprecedented. It’s sui generis . It’s whatever you can think of. Get the thesaurus out and let’s go through the words to describe it.

She doesn’t have a machete. She operates with a really short staff. And that’s as honed and as sharp a scalpel that you’re going to find and it’s working.

Did you read George Clooney’s piece in the Times ? What did you think of that?

I think that’s the way that George feels. I haven’t talked to him in a while. But I saw people that were at the fundraiser in West Los Angeles. And they said you could just see his body language. He was not happy. And I haven’t spoken to him. There was no “hey man, what are you gonna do, what are you gonna do” kind of thing.

But when I read it, it was entirely consistent with what I was told that his general mood was. And I think that he is reflecting. Those people, like the rest of us, I know a lot of them, they know each other, they talk to each other. They gossip back and forth and they go to the same clubs and restaurants. I think he would be hearing overwhelmingly the same thing from a lot of influential people out there.

You have a very novel proposal for how you think the selection process for a Biden replacement should go. Can you run us through what that idea is?

So the first thing to know about me, if you didn’t already know it, I’m really a provocateur more than I am a logistical guy. So sometimes you just gotta throw stuff out there. I could tell you what the strategic impulse of this is: I know that there’s a bucket load of talent in this party. I know that.

If you were able to pull off a town hall and have President Clinton and Obama moderate the town hall, you would get 100 million viewers. People would go, “oh shit.”

And so what I’m trying to do is suggest the most dramatic way that we can get all this talent front and center, and to do something because we are all in it. Because people are just starved for something different. I know that. People like to argue with me about the details. You don’t get James Carville. Fuck the details. I’m trying to lob a grenade in a room and get people to react to it. And they’ve got better-detailed people than me.

Who’s your preferred candidate?

I’ll be just as honest as I can be because there’s no reason for me to be dishonest. I would really like to watch and see some people who I think are going to be better be worse, and some people who I think are going to be worse be better. I will say this, I keep hearing people who I trust who say Harris has really gotten better.

But let’s have an Olympic trial before we go to the Olympics. I think she would start with a position that if you’re good, we’ll be for you. All things being equal, I don’t have any doubt that she would be or even or should be the choice for the Democrats.

But if we did, and there was somebody that was really good and she picked that person for a vice president, you can start something. Politics, particularly Democratic politics, is really about excitement. It’s about hope. Franklin Roosevelt, a deal made in hope. Bill Clinton, the man from Hope. Barack Obama, the Hope poster. It’s not just a bunch of policies on one side of the line or the other. It’s really about giving people something to look forward to, something to be a part of.

Politics should be a common undertaking for people, and it’s anything but that right now. Anything we could do to stimulate that, I think it’s worth taking a shot in.

What do you make of this argument that you’re shafting the first Black woman to be vice president if you pass over Harris for the job?

It’s the most unimpressive argument I’ve ever heard in my life. I mean, really? Because what you teach athletes is you always want the ball. So if you’re a third baseman and you said, “God damn, I hope you don’t get the ball to me, you’re not going to catch it.” Your mentality has to be “hit the thing right here, you son of a bitch, I’m gonna catch it and throw you out.”

So if Harris is sending people out, well obviously she can’t say it now because she’s understandably in a sticky wicket, but if her people come out blazing that to not do this because it’s an insult to whatever everywhere, that’s a losing message. That’s a loser’s message. That “you don’t have any choice but to pick me,” not “I’m going to make you want to pick me.” That’s your attitude.

In all my life I’ve had stupid confidence. And sometimes you need stupid confidence. But I’m just saying, if they go with that message, that’s not going to inspire anybody. “If you don’t go with me, you’ve insulted the entire class of the Democratic coalition.” Oh, come on. You could do better than that, can’t you? With just a little bit of effort?

By the way, if she says she’s going to do this and she looks forward to making a presentation, she would probably chase more people off. But you got to understand something about this business. It’s really about confidence and hope. Once you don’t show confidence, then you get killed. And you can never be any better than you think you are.

If I was advising her, I’d say “you were better than all these motherfuckers, come on. You were a former prosecutor. You were a former state attorney general. You were a former United States senator. You’re vice president of the United States. You might be the most qualified person to run for vice president since I don’t know who. God damn it. You want that ball? Hit it here. I got it.”

That’s the attitude that you have to have in politics. You got to have that in journalism. I can fucking do this. I know how to pick out stories. I know how to lay it out. I know how to click the video or something. You got to be cocky. If you’re not cocky, you ain’t worth a shit. I don’t know if I can be any clearer than that.

Speaking of the media, the Biden team has been at war with the press for the last few weeks; The New York Times in particular. They’ve taken crap from the campaign over the editorial board’s aggressive push to see him step down, a couple other pieces that they’ve published, including yours. Do you think it’s wise for the Biden team to be making this a fight between the president and the press?

You have the catastrophic events of the night of the 26th of June. This is standard playbook. First, it went the staff. The staff had overworked, I believe by actually 11 days. 11-day jetlag. Come on, man, that’s a lot. Then it’s the media. That’s predictable. The media hates me. The media doesn’t like me. They don’t go to the same clubs I do. I don’t hang out at the same cocktail parties they do. Then it’s the elites. Elites? What the fuck is an elite? Do I look like an elite to you? It’s all the standard playbook.

And if you start at people want you to win, you’re going to win. They don’t want you to win, you’re not going to win. And they clearly don’t want Biden. They blame the fact that he is old. They don’t blame The New York Times for telling them that he’s old.

And you saw the wisdom of the coverage on display of the debate. And the other thing that I would point out, I just did a thing with the Dow Jones board or something. And you hear this shit, the media this, the media that, the media controls everything, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. In ’92, we had 150 reporters on the campaign plane. The Des Moines paper had somebody, the Boise, Idaho paper had somebody too. Now, you might get the Times , the Post , or maybe Politico, that’s about it.

When I was a young man, Lyndon Johnson said, I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost a war. That’s power. If you say today, if you lose Wolf Blitzer, well they don’t give a shit. I want to be clear, it’s not a rap on Wolf or anybody else, but there’s no one commanding person that has so much influence that you’d say that’s the end of that. That’s when you really have power. And it’s in people’s interest sometimes to prop up the power. Sometimes it’s in the media’s interest to prop up their own power. Understand that. But what is the media? I have no idea. It’s like being in the elite. What the fuck is the elite? There’s all kinds of journalism out there, there’s all kinds of stuff. And everybody’s got a site, everybody’s got a podcast, everybody’s got a YouTube channel, and I don’t know if it’s good or bad. It’s just there. It’s just a thing.

You’ve run a number of incredibly successful campaigns over the decades you’ve been in politics. Do you think that it’s harder now with the media climate to run a campaign, or has the fact that the media is more saturated and less powerful made it easier for campaigns?

So some years ago, maybe ten. I don’t know. Not that long. Foreign Affairs , you know that gray shit people buy at the airport to act like they’re smart?

Yes. I have an unread copy on my desk.

They got a hold of a memo that Cicero’s brother wrote about politics. And they asked me if I would review the memo. And my conclusion was, oh, we hadn’t thought of anything new. It was the same back then, talking about filing fake lawsuits and attacking opponents first. We all think that we’re part of some revolution. But politics is always about framing a choice. Politics has always been about being dominating and dominating the narrative, all of that. You read Cicero’s brother’s memo and he could have written it for any campaign today.

And people become fascinated and they go, wow, how do you adapt with all of the online internet stuff? There are two kinds of people, political professionals. Those that are experts in how you communicate and those that are experts in what you communicate. I don’t care. You have the printing press, great. And people think we live in an age of rapid technological intervention. Think of the day if you lived in a sod house in Nebraska. Think of your life today, before you had radio, and today after you had radio. Oh, brother, was that a big deal. TV, that was great. And internet was great, but that go from no radio to radio. Everything instantaneously. You were entertained. You knew what the Dow was. You knew who won the ballgame. You knew what movies were coming out.

And we always feel like when we go through some technological transformation, we have a perch in history that no one else has done. And people become fascinated with how you communicate and forget you can pay people to do that. They have people that know fucking algorithms and God knows what not, and how to tailor a message for a particular subgroup. Everybody does that shit and there’s nothing wrong with it. It is good business. But if you don’t have product, it doesn’t matter.

Why do you think the Biden campaign has been so reticent to accept that most Americans don’t think he should run for another term? What do you think the sticking point is there that’s stopping them from just saying this clearly isn’t going to work?

The people that work for President Biden, I know them, they’re friends of mine, they’re all able people. But I think he has employees and he asked them what he should do, what is it that they see and they say, the country really doesn’t want Trump back at the end of the day. And at the end of the day, people are going to see this choice and they are going to choose to vote against Trump. They may be right.

But it does not look particularly encouraging right now as you look across it. But why gamble? Why not give the people what they want, all they’re asking for is something different. They’re not asking for a program of ethnic cleansing. They’re not asking for a major tax cut. They just want something different. Why not give it to them?

Of course, people were right, that they didn’t cover Trump enough. He lied the whole whole way. But we already knew he was going to do that. That’s not newsworthy. And there’s plenty of time to deal with Trump. And he’s a criminal. I mean that’s all he is. And to not see that is to be an idiot. I’m not just talking about the payments to Stormy Daniels, I’m talking across the board. Look at how many criminals he had in his administration.

Look at the Supreme Court. God, who could look at that shit? Every person in the federal government from private in the Army to Secretary of State lives under an enforceable code of ethics and an enforceable gift ban, except for nine people. So the rules don’t apply to us. And we live in a country where we’re told the most fundamental thing you can have is every person is equal before the law. We don’t have a king. Well, fuck that, we don’t live in that country anymore. I think they are a justifiably enormous issue. Democrats have not lost an election since Dobbs . I don’t think you can spend too much time attacking the Supreme Court for catastrophic ethical standards and for just writing whatever the fuck they want — we want we want this outcome, so we’ll figure out a way to write it to get whatever we want. I think it’s a great issue, and I think it also feeds into the overall cynicism and lethargy when people look at the United States government, any of the three branches. And I can’t blame them, it’s hard to blame people for it.

Speaking of issues for this election, you famously coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid,” while working on Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992. What phrase would you use for a Democrat looking to beat Trump in 2024?

Hope we can do it as a nation. I think people are — new direction, new energy, new America. Let’s get a fresh start. You’re not going to come out with a 30-point plan. You just don’t have time. And it’s just not worth it. People say well you say it’s economy, stupid. James. Well, actually if you look at the data, people over 55 have one view. They’re a pretty happy lot, by and large. I think Biden so far has done better with older voters than you would expect from a Democrat.

With younger voters, that ain’t worth a shit. Why? Because I live in one economy and 27-year-olds live in an entirely different economy. I live in an economy that is rigged in favor of savers. I live in an economy that is designed to protect people who have it made. And I feel much better about the economy than somebody who is 26 or 27 and says, what is this guy talking about? I can’t buy a house, I can’t afford insurance, I can’t afford interest rates. I can’t afford that. You read these stories that it costs $73,620 to go to college. Who wants to fucking pay that?

And the most illuminating thing I’ve seen in the last year is the Scott Galloway TedTalk video — we just have intergenerational theft in this country on a magnitude that’s almost impossible to comprehend. And young people know that we’re stealing from them. They understand. They may not have thought it out to the nth degree, but yes, I think this time does show it really is a lot more about the economy than you think. And it’s reflected in the different views people have of the economy.

Say Democrats can’t turn it around. Trump wins. What do you think we have in store for a second Trump term? What does that look like?

Lawlessness on a scale that we can’t comprehend. They’re already coming out saying they’re going to do it. Christian nationalism is going to take hold in the courts. If Trump wins, he will turn over everything to them. It’s the most insidious, dangerous, anti-American thing that I could possibly think of. But it sounds quite fine, you’re a Christian, you’re a nationalist, what’s that? Everything.

I think that you are going to see a destroyed NATO. We’re going to be expressing the values of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. We’re going to continue down the path of lawlessness. I don’t know, what else can I say? They’re already telling it, this whole thing about Project 25, it’s almost predictable. It would be so tragic and so against who we are as a country that you almost want to laugh at it. But the catastrophe that awaits, and I literally think this, I think it’d be the end of the Constitution. I really do.

I already see that we’re starting to place people above the law. I’ve already seen where Supreme Court justices are talking about the Comstock Act. I’m already seeing Josh Hawley and Mike Johnson say, I’m a Christian nationalist, you got a problem with that? And I think this is just going to encourage more and more and more of that.

And the one thing I do firmly believe is that there’s only one hope for America, and that’s the Democratic Party. There’s no hope outside of that bucket. When you look at it you say, God damn, that’s an unwieldy, convoluted, constipated thing if I ever saw one. And you’re right about everything. But that’s all we got. We got nothing else, and we got to at least get this thing kind of right and win.

Because if we lose, we lose the Constitution. If you think that these guys give a rat’s ass about freedom of speech, freedom of anything, you’re just not living in the world. And that’s what I think. And it’s one of those things where I’m pretty sure I’m right. I’m really not having second thoughts on that.

Watch the video above via Mediaite’s Press Club on YouTube.