James Carville says Democrats couldn't shake off 'stench' of defund the police, wokeness

Democratic strategist James Carville feels Vice President Kamala Harris failed to prevail on Election Day because Democrats couldn’t shake the "stench" of the "defund the police" movement and wokeness. 

President-elect Donald Trump thumped Harris to reclaim the White House, leaving Democrats to ponder where they went wrong. Carville, a former Bill Clinton adviser who has been a prominent media presence throughout the 2024 presidential race, feels the Democratic Party has become obsessed with "identitarianism," a word he uses because he doesn’t like the term "woke," according to the New York Times.  

"We could never wash off the stench of it," Carville told the Times, adding that "defund the police" are "the three stupidest words in the English language."

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"It’s like when you get smoke on your clothes, and you have to wash them again and again. Now people are running away from it like the devil runs away from holy water," Carville said.

The Times added that Carville did give Harris "credit for not leaning into her gender and ethnicity."

Last week, Carville indicated he was still trying to make heads or tails of the election results.

"I don’t know what percent of this defeat is because we didn’t embrace the change message or we kept something too long — you know, there was some flaw in our strategy and our presentation," said Carville.

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He continued, "I’ll have to reevaluate. I’m sure I’ll come up with something to make me feel good again, but right now, today, it’s hard."

Ahead of the election, Carville predicted that Harris would win because Trump is "stone a-- nuts."

"She’s got more money, got more energy, has a more united party, has better surrogates and he’s stone a-- nuts," Carville told MSNBC's "Morning Joe," when asked about why he thought the vice president would be the winner.  

Fox News Digitals’ Hanna Panreck and Gabriel Hays contributed to this report.