The once-glamorous progressive wing of the Democratic Party — the “Squad” that mainstream media fawned over like it was the second coming of FDR — is officially washed up, at least according to one of the party’s most famous strategists.
James Carville, the “Ragin’ Cajun” who helped Bill Clinton win the White House in 1992, recently tore into Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar, and their ilk, accusing them of caring more about Twitter clout and media attention than winning elections or actually helping working Americans.
“They don’t win elections,” Carville said bluntly in an interview with the Daily Beast. “All they do is impress other journalists.” And he’s not wrong. For all the noise, not a single member of the Squad has flipped a red seat blue or built any coalition beyond MSNBC’s green room.
It’s a brutal truth for the likes of AOC and Bernie, currently gallivanting across the country on their “Fight Oligarchy” tour. Carville mocked the tour’s name, pointing out that most Americans “don’t even know what [oligarchy] means.” It’s classic left-wing overreach — throwing around Marxist buzzwords while ordinary Americans are just trying to pay for groceries and fill their gas tanks.
Carville, who coined the legendary phrase “It’s the economy, stupid,” knows better than anyone that winning means focusing on what matters to voters. For him, the Democrats’ current obsession with identity politics and intellectual jargon is a losing strategy.
“Let’s send an 83-year-old socialist and a congresswoman from Queens to talk to Middle America,” Carville quipped sarcastically. It’s a shot straight at Bernie and AOC, whose messaging might play in Manhattan coffee shops but falls flat in the heartland. Bernie couldn’t even win his own party’s nomination — twice. Meanwhile, AOC’s far-left baggage is a liability for Democrats trying to hang onto swing seats in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Carville also had a warning for the party’s future: stop handing the nomination to Biden and Kamala Harris without a real debate. “We need a mini-convention,” he said, pushing for a process that opens the door for younger, lesser-known Democrats to emerge.
And he’s right. The Democratic Party has become a geriatric echo chamber. Carville’s advice? Focus on helping working-class Americans, not building social media empires or preaching about pronouns. If Democrats want to stop the bleeding, they’ll need to ditch the Squad, drop the slogans, and rediscover how to win elections — before President Trump and the GOP run the table in 2026 and beyond.
And it is the democrat party’s intention to win elections and maintain power. It is their objective to establish and expand a strong federal bureaucracy to regulate industry and labor along with most other aspects of civil life. Of course any opposition must be rigorously suppressed.