James Carville tees off on state of Democratic Party: ‘Do we want to be an ideological cult?’

Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville went off on the current state of the party on Tuesday, asking why Tom Perez “is still the chair” of the Democratic National Committee. 

“We gotta decide what we want to be,” the “Ragin’ Cajun” said on “The Beat” with Ari Melber on MSNBC. “Do we want to be an ideological cult, or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct — to be a majority party?” 

In another part of the interview, Carville said Democrats need to “wake up” while avoiding being seen as the equivalent of the United Kingdom’s Labor Party, which has suffered a string of crushing losses recently.

“This party needs to wake up and make sure that we talk about things that are relevant to people,” Carville implored. “We don’t need to become the British Labor Party. That’s a bad thing. It’s not going well over there.”  

“We’re, like, talking about people voting from jail cells,” Carville said at another point. “And not having a border.”

Carville, 75, coined the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” as a senior strategist during Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign.