Saturday on CNN’s “Smerconish,” Democratic strategist James Carville followed up on an interview he conducted with the left-leaning website Vox last month, warning Democrats about the dangers of overreaching on the so-called “woke” culture.
Carville described the woke phenomenon as “politics of the faculty lounge.”
“First of all, it sounds — I call it the politics of the faculty lounge, and in my view, if you want to — in politics, you should speak the language of the people,” he said. “You should speak clear, direct English and address people as they address each other, not like the humanities department at Amherst wants you to address everybody.”
According to the veteran political media personality, the approach will not motivate an electorate to win elections.
“Most of the people that are enthused by this kind of dialogue live in Boston or Manhattan or Washington, but we’re going to carry D.C. and New York and Massachusetts,” Carville said. “We’re not going to win an election in a faculty lounge. That’s just — that’s just idiotic. I mean, I’m not saying you’re idiotic. That whole assumption is idiotic. And the number of people that have contacted me or had people contact me after this has been enormously gratifying. Everybody just wanted this temperature to break. I think that — I get people saying they’re woke, and they’re tired of being woke. People want to — after this pandemic and stuff, people want to go about their lives, they want to enjoy it, they want to enjoy their friends.”
“They don’t want to be nervous about how you address them or talk to them or anything,” he added. “And, you know, that’s just where people are, and people have gotten fired over this, people have lost their jobs over retweeting academic research. I mean, time and time again, you hear this from everybody, and of course, people say I don’t want to say anything because I’ll lose my job. Well, it so happens that I’m just at a point in life where there’s nothing to cancel me from, so I don’t care. Do what you want to do.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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