‘Massive disaster’: even James Carville has reached his wit’s end with Dems’ identity politics obsession

Democratic strategist James Carville ranted on his Thursday podcast about the political damage diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has inflicted on his party.

Democrats have repeatedly pushed DEI agendas, including in the government under former President Joe Biden’s administration. In response to a “Politics War Room” listener’s question asking why Democrats are “fighting so hard for DEI,” Carville asserted the premise of the question was wrong, claiming it is now a universal belief that DEI is disastrous — before clarifying his criticism was broader than just DEI.

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“They don’t [fight for DEI]. And everybody is trying to get away from it. I read a story, [Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] AOC has scrubbed her site of pronouns,” Carville said. “Everybody knows this has been a big, giant, massive disaster. So there are two kinds of people in this debate. There are people like me that said, ‘This is a disaster and we’re still trying to wash the stench of this shit off. Every year that goes by, we get a little bit of a less stench. It was really stupid.’”

“Then you have people say, ‘Well, it probably wasn’t that great an idea, but no one talks about it, so it didn’t hurt us in the election.’ Bullshit, it hurt us in the election,” he continued. “The whole thing hurt us. It hurt the image of the party. No one that I know of is really promoting this crap anymore. Maybe it’s some couple of museums and foundations. That’s about all that’s left for this nonsense.”

Carville then said he felt compelled to clarify that his tirade was also focused on identity politics generally rather than solely DEI.

“I need to clean something up here. When I was going on this rant about DEI, what was really at the core of it was the whole identity politics movement, of which clearly DEI was a part of,” he said. “But do I think that diversity should be a part of everything? I obviously do.”

“The DEI was conflating that with a lot of the identity movement … you had these people coming up saying how not to be this and they were shaking companies down. They were doing seminars on how to not be a racist and stuff,” he added. “And people resented it. And I can understand that. No one wants to sit on a Saturday morning being mandated to be told that you’re some kind of awful human being. That part was definitely a racket. But I generally want to be clear — I’m generally supportive of any effort to bring more diversity to the organization.”

Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, businesses like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Target, Walmart, Boeing, Verizon and T-Mobile have begun to eliminate or scale back their DEI programs.

Portraying former Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party as too far left on transgender issues was one of the most potent advertising campaigns in boosting support for Trump and Republican candidates down the ballot during the 2024 election, according to multiple reports. Two ads in particular featured the line, “Kamala is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you.”

Trump’s second term has included endeavors to cut DEI out of the workforce and schools through executive orders, such as an one mandating the Labor Department eliminate affirmative action terms from federal contracts.

The University of Pennsylvania also agreed with the Trump administration on July 1 to strip transgender swimmer Lia Thomas of previous records and titles while competing in women’s swimming.

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