James Carville Admits Democrats Had No Shutdown Endgame, Mishandled Strategy [WATCH]

Democratic strategist James Carville said Tuesday that Democrats mishandled their shutdown strategy and lacked a clear plan for how to end it.

His comments came during an interview on former CNN host Jim Acosta’s Substack, one day before the House prepared to vote on a federal funding bill expected to reopen the government, as reported by Fox News.

Acosta referenced President Donald Trump’s recent Fox News interview, during which the President said Republicans “broke” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Carville responded by acknowledging widespread criticism of how Democrats approached the shutdown.

“First of all, the lesson is, everything that everybody says is true,” Carville said.

“There was not a real endgame plan here. It was a simple legislative maneuvering that we didn’t do that well on. There were a couple of points, and also the eight senators who decided to reopen the government — everything they say is true.”

Eight members of the Democratic caucus voted with Republicans to end the shutdown. Those senators have faced internal backlash, and Schumer has encountered calls to be replaced as the party’s Senate leader, although he did not vote to reopen the government.

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Carville urged Democrats not to turn on one another. “And this is just one of those things, that I’m not mad at anybody on the Democratic side. And no one on the Democratic side should be mad at anybody else on the Democratic side,” he said.

He said Democrats should air their frustrations only until Wednesday, adding that after the vote, people should “shut up” and move on.

Carville also described the internal dynamics of the shutdown debate.

“So, when you’re in a coalition, you have different tensions within the coalition. And when you negotiate with a cult, and understand that is what the Republican Party is today. It’s a cult,” he said. “You’re at a severe disadvantage.”

He said Democrats’ internal disagreements set them apart from Republicans. According to Carville, members of his party often operate with a “you’re not the boss of me” mindset, while Republicans act with more uniformity.

Carville said that if he were a Republican, he would have voted with Democrats on extending Obamacare subsidies, arguing those subsidies are important to key GOP voters.

“I can just say the Democrats held me hostage,” he said. “The Democrats, you know, I think they had an exit ramp here. And now they’ve just shut the exit ramp down. And there’s no interstate that goes into infinity.”

He added that Republicans could have framed the decision differently.

“I actually thought, politically, the best decision they [Republicans] could have made was claim that the Democrats are political terrorists, but we’ve got to vote for this and it would have been out of the trap. But they hate it [Obamacare] so much, it’s irrational.”

Carville said someone within the Democratic Party likely believed the deal was too advantageous to pass up. Both Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have criticized the agreement.

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