“There is only one moral imperative in this country right now and that is to beat Donald Trump. That’s the only moral imperative. It’s the only thing I wanna hear.” — James Carville, insisting that Democrats need to stop talking about “stuff that is not relevant,” … “goofy stuff,” … “exotic positions,” and address the pragmatic concerns of American voters, reflecting “the struggles that people go through…”
Then Claire McCaskill prompted these observations:
“We gotta decide what we wanna be. Do we want to be an ideological cult? Or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party?
I know where you stand, Senator, since you had to run in a Red State.”
“Right,” replies McCaskill.
Carville (convinced that a Bernie Sanders’ nomination, even if he won the White House, would likely result in Mitch McConnell keeping his majority in the Senate, in which case a Democratic president could get nothing done) believes that a candidate with appeal outside the urban areas (where most Democrats, especially those on the left side of the party, are clustered) would be more likely to lead to a big victory — including taking back the Senate. Note, in contrast to many ‘centrist’ critics of Sanders, Carville (a self-described liberal) is a fan of Elizabeth Warren and was rooting for her to get her campaign back on track.