Famed Democrat strategist James Carville said in an interview Sunday the party needs to prioritize issues Republicans "can't beef on."
Carville, appearing on "Inside with Jen Psaki" on MSNBC said the party's platform must be popular with its base and then make sure the ideas are popular with the rest of the country.
"It has to be something the Republicans can't beef on," Carville said.
The strategist said ideas like raising the minimum wage, abortion protections and tax cuts for people making under $400,000 are ideas that Republicans would have a hard time criticizing.
Financiers and billionaires "won't let them," Carville said, and abortion proved a popular messaging cry during the 2022 midterm elections, which came after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed the right to the procedure.
Carville said Democrats need to engage in plain talk and stop speaking in a "jargonistic language."
"Just be authentic and to the point," Carville said.
Last week in an opinion piece in The New York Times, Carville admitted he was wrong about the 2024 election and chalked Vice President Kamala Harris' loss up to the phrase he famously coined in 1992: "It's the economy, stupid."
"Democrats have flat-out lost the economic narrative," he wrote. "The only path to electoral salvation is to take it back. Perception is everything in politics, and a lot of Americans perceive us as out to lunch on the economy — not feeling their pain, or else caring too much about other things instead."
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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