Carville: Dems Aren’t This Stupid — It Must Be Sabotage

Would this explain a few things? You bet! As for me, though, I prefer Hanlon’s Razor in these moments.

James Carville made some news last night on a podcast with Al Hunt, lamenting the inability of Democrats to organize any effective opposition to Donald Trump. Trump’s flood-the-zone strategy for the first weeks back in the Oval Office has Democrats floundering, even someone as experienced as Carville. “We’re getting overwhelmed,” he told Hunt, and “it’s all too incomprehensible.”

True enough so far, eh? Carville credits Bannon in this part, who had said that a second Trump term needed to “flood the [media] zone with s***,” but that’s where Carville is wrong. Trump hasn’t flooded the media zone; he’s flooded the bureaucracy zone, along with the Senate. Trump hasn’t done the “mean tweet” media tweaking of the first term, at least not yet; he’s focusing this time on actually “draining the swamp,” and demonstrating just how well he prepared for his return to the White House. 

This isn’t a PR strategy. It’s a full-scale, broad-spectrum effort to fulfill his campaign promises to the extent of his authority. Thanks to that preparation, Trump now has reform efforts starting in all executive-branch agencies simultaneously with the support of Elon Musk and the US DOGE Service that Democrats built. 

Democrats can’t keep up with Trump’s broad-spectrum approach because they never took Trump seriously (only literally, to paraphrase Salena Zito’s famous warning). They assumed that they would get a rerun of an unprepared Trump 1.0 and never bothered to prepare themselves for New And Improved Trump 2.0. 

And this is where we will get to Hanlon’s Razor, which advises: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. In an earlier discussion with Hunt, Carville discussed the doubling-down Democrats have done since losing the election, and claimed that Democrat leadership couldn’t possibly be this stupid. Carville suggested sabotage as a better explanation, although possibly he meant it tongue in cheek:

Pointing to the gender rules that were enumerated during a recent Democratic National Committee meeting – that went viral due to their woke nature – the longtime Democratic strategist suggested that someone was sabotaging the party from within by suggesting these policy points.

“And it’s like, there’s a, a plant somewhere in quote, progressive, unquote America, that just to seize how many jacka–, stupid things that they can embrace, it’s stunningly stupid. Both of them.”

Why would Carville assume that Democrats can’t be this “stunningly stupid,” if he meant it seriously? What does the last four years of the Joe Biden Dementia Cover-Up and the Kamala Harris Switcheroo tell him? There’s plenty of evidence of stupidity and/or mass psychosis In the same meeting Carville references, too. The DNC voted to make David Hogg its vice chair, where he garnered well over 200 votes from the national, state, and local Democrat party officials gathered for the DNC meeting. Literally every candidate on stage for the DNC officers election raised their hand when Jonathan Capehart asked whether they believed racism and misogyny is why Democrats lost the election.

And to Carville’s specific example of stupidity, how many Democrats at that meeting objected to this moment?

I can’t believe what I just listened to. The DNC Leader interrupted the party election to tell members that not enough non-binary candidates have been elected, so they MUST now vote for one.

“With the results of the previous four elections, our elected officers are currently two… pic.twitter.com/8CelMVzyE6

— George (@BehizyTweets) February 1, 2025

Did anyone at the DNC object to this? Anyone? If this is a sabotage mission within the DNC, it would have to employ the Murder On the Orient Express model — literally everyone would have to be in on it. 

Unfortunately for Carville, Hanlon’s Razor applies. This isn’t malice, at least not the kind that Carville suggests. This is stupidity, arrogance, denial, and the political death throes of a radical cult that seized control of the Democrat Party over the last generation — at least. And as polls show, the American electorate is pretty danged stoked to see them implode.