Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville blamed “too many preachy females” in the party for decreasing President Joe Biden’s appeal to men, especially minority voters.
Carville gave his politically incorrect take to Maureen Dowd in her opinion column published Saturday by The New York Times.
After Dowd wrote that Carville “has been obsessed with Biden bleeding Black male voters,” Carville offered his eyebrow-raising assessment.
“A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females” dominating the culture of his party, he said. “‘Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch football. Don’t eat hamburgers. This is not good for you.’ The message is too feminine: ‘Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.’”
“If you listen to Democratic elites — NPR is my go-to place for that — the whole talk is about how women, and women of color, are going to decide this election,” Carville continued. “I’m like: ‘Well, 48% of the people that vote are males. Do you mind if they have some consideration?’”
Last week, CNN published new polling indicating that support for Biden among voters of color has reached a historic low in the swing state of Michigan, following a pattern in other states of diminished minority backing.
A Gallup poll in February indicated that Democrats’ status as the party of preference among Black voters has been reduced by almost 20 points in the last three years.
Carville, who famously counseled former President Bill Clinton to victory in 1992, did not specifically identify any of the women he deemed “preachy,” but one of the party’s more outspoken progressive lawmakers, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), clapped back.
“Maybe he should start a podcast about it,” she wrote on X. “I hear men are really underrepresented in that space.”