Democratic strategist James Carville slammed his party on Thursday. He called out their focus on issues disconnected from everyday Americans.
On his “Politics War Room” podcast, Carville let loose. He mocked New York Democrats for pushing pet bereavement leave. He also ridiculed the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) gender rules.
“For my outrage, these are … two things that Democrats have done that are so unmoored to what anyone in the country thinks or feels like. It’s almost impossible,” Carville said. “The first one is some Democrats and progressives in New York are advocating for bereavement pet leave.”
“Okay, so in other words, if your cat dies, you get three days of paid leave. Does anyone even know, like in rural America, like where I grew up, how many dead animals?” he continued.
“In the entire history of the United States, let me tell you something — a sentence that has never, ever, ever been uttered: ‘Well, Martha, Fido died, so I can’t bale a hay today.’ I mean, come on,” he said. “I mean, please, just think of how — and fortunately, no one’s going to overly publicize this, although the right’s using it in some places — just how clueless you sound to people who are agrarian. It’s like, you know, you’re living on a different thing. Life and death on a farm is something that happens every six hours. I mean, my God.”
New York City council members introduced the bill in October. It would let New Yorkers use their sick time to care for their pets.
At Saturday’s DNC meeting, outgoing chair Jaime Harrison stumbled. He struggled to explain his party’s gender rules. He said that “in order to be gender-balanced” the party must elect “one male, one female, and one person of any gender” as vice chair.
Carville read from an article in The Atlantic on the issue. “Speaking to the Democratic National Committee, which met to select its new leadership this weekend, the outgoing chair, Jaime Harrison, attempted to explain a point about its rules concerning gender balance for its vice-chair race. ‘The rules specify that when we have a gender-nonbinary candidate or officer, the nonbinary individual is counted as neither male nor female, and the remaining six officers must be gender balanced.’”
“Did I just read this? Of course I did. And do you believe this? Of course you do,” Carville said. “Because that’s the level of jackassery that — now, does any Democratic candidate? No. I don’t even know if [newly elected DNC Chair] Ken Martin himself actually [believes it]. But they do it. And it’s like there’s a plant somewhere in ‘progressive’ America that just sees how many jackass stupid things that they can embrace. It’s stunningly stupid. Both of them.”