The Return of the Left Populism
James Carville on the Strategy for the Democrats
James Carville is a political consultant and one of the most influential strategists for the Democratic Party. He was the chief architect of the successful presidential campaign of Bill Clinton in 1992 and the one who coined the catchphrase “It’s the economy, stupid.”
James Carville, credit: JD Lasica/Socialmedia.biz
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He periodically writes for the NYT opinion page and is well-worth listening to. For many decades he has been deeply embedded in the Democratic Party’s strategist class and his writings partly reflect and partly aim to influence internal dynamics within the party.
As an example, his Feb. 25, 2025 guest essay, It’s Time for a Daring Political Maneuver, Democrats, advised the Democrats to “roll over and play dead.” This “strategy” was a reflection of the party in disarray, reeling from the crushing defeat in November 2024, leader-less and strategy-less.
More recently, his tone has changed. In the latest essay, Out With Woke. In With Rage (Nov. 24, 2025), he has started to formulate a positive program for the Democrats:
I am now an 81-year-old man and I know that in the minds of many, I carry the torch from a so-called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic Party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.
This is a big shift and it reflects the revolutionary times we live in. As I wrote in End Times, the Democratic Party did a great job suppressing its populist wing. This contributed to the defeat of its presidential candidates in both 2016 and 2024. What Carville calls “centrist,” actually, means “conducting policies for and by the ruling class.” Now that it has been overthrown, the Democratic Party is ripe for the takeover by the left-wing populists (just like the Republican Part may be in the process of being taken over by the right-wing populists). And that’s what Carville essentially proposes.
Carville’s piece reads a lot like my posts in the series A Chronicle of Revolution. I doubt he read it; most likely, it’s starting to dawn on the former ruling party that “centrism” is dead. A few quotes:
“The people are revolting, and they have been for some time.”
“the rigged, screwed-up, morally bankrupt system”
“If you’re a student of history, the French Revolution is in the American wind.”
“Le peuple se lève.”
Winning an election won’t fix what’s breaking America. Tweaking the economy won’t either. If Democrats don’t confront popular immiseration, voters will keep reaching for anyone who promises to smash the system — and sooner or later, we’ll get someone even more dangerous than Trump. Burning fishing boats as quasi–public executions may seem minor one day compared to what the next figure in this cycle might be willing to do.
The real pressure is coming from the educated-but-stuck: people drowning in student debt and locked out of upward mobility. Mamdani may be an early warning of where this energy is headed, and that story isn’t finished — we don’t yet know whether leaders like him can genuinely change the system or merely talk like they will.
The rising wing of the DNC are the young progressives who are internationalist anti-populists.
Carville lost the struggle for his party.