It seems that James Carville has seen the light, and as a result he's now channelling his inner Bernie Sanders. In an opinion piece in today's New York Times, Carville calls on Democrats to focus on what he calls "good old-fashioned economic populism, both in message and measure." In some ways, this is Carville circling back to an earlier time for him, since he was the one who came up with the slogan: "It's the economy, stupid" during Bill Clinton's first successful presidential campaign. You might call it Carville's "It's still the economy, stupid" moment.

Some might remember that earlier this year (back in late February), Carville wrote another opinion piece for the Times where he advocated a stunning retreat for Democrats -- "roll over and play dead," in his words. But to be scrupulously fair, while he was doing this he was also telling Democrats that it was more about biding their time than a total surrender. He said to play dead, in other words, not to just completely give up the ghost. Here are two passages from this earlier piece which show this:

With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it's time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us. Only until the Trump administration has spiraled into the low 40s or high 30s in public approval polling percentages should we make like a pack of hyenas and go for the jugular. Until then, I'm calling for a strategic political retreat.

. . .

At this rate, the [Donald] Trump honeymoon will be over, best case, by Memorial Day but more likely in the next 30 days. And in November 2025, we start turning the tide with what will be remembered as one of the most important elections in recent years: the Virginia governor's race. From tax enforcers to rocket scientists, bank regulators and essential workers -- the Trump administration is hellbent on drastically firing the federal work force, despite the fact that federal civilian employees account for just 3 percent of the federal budget. These workers are highly concentrated in Virginia, home to around 144,000 civilian federal employees. It looks set to be a resounding Republican defeat. This will be the first moment when we can take the offensive back and begin our crusade again.

This turned out to be pretty accurate, in a number of ways. Trump has indeed spiralled into the low 40s or high 30s in his job approval polling. Democrats not just resoundingly won the Virginia governor's race, they also wound up sweeping the entire 2025 election cycle. So Carville can argue now that his two columns aren't contradictory, and that now is the time for Democrats to "make like a pack of hyenas and go for the jugular."

But what's interesting is the direction he's urging Democrats to now take, as even he admits. He's not just using the language and metaphors of Bernie Sanders, he's reaching all the way back to the French Revolution (the article is titled: "Out With Woke, In With Rage," and ends with the French sentence: "Le peuple se lève," or: "The people rise up"). Carville isn't usually such a fire-breathing radical, to state the obvious. But he's now seen the light in a big way. Which, as mentioned, he explicitly admits, early on in his piece:

Zohran Mamdani, Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill -- even down-ballot Georgia Democrats -- all won [in the 2025 elections] with soaring margins because the people are pissed. And the people always point their anger at the party in charge. Rent is out of control. Young people can't afford homes or pay student debt. We're living through the greatest economic inequality since the Roaring Twenties.

President [Donald] Trump has done nothing to curb the cost of what it requires to take even a breath in America today, the centerpiece promise of his 2024 campaign. The people are revolting, and they have been for some time.

This offers Democrats the greatest gift you can have in American politics: a second chance. I am now an 81-year-old man and I know that in the minds of many, I carry the torch from a so-called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic Party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.

It is time for Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic and altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage. This is our only way out of the abyss.

Which, of course, Bernie has been urging Democrats to do for decades, now. Carville is more of a behind-the-scenes strategist though, who has a deep respect for what works politically -- even if it's not precisely what he personally believes. He has a good radar for what actually wins elections, to put this another way. So he is now all-in on economic populism, since it was the common theme for Democrats' biggest electoral victories of the year:

Just as it was for the Mamdani campaign, raging against the rigged, screwed-up, morally bankrupt system that gave us the cost of living crisis must be the centerpiece of every Democratic campaign in America. Unless you're the top 1 percent, this touches everybody. Even lifelong Republicans know this economy isn't working.

We have to present ourselves as adamantly, even angrily, opposing the system that is preventing younger rural voters from buying homes, jacking up utility bills and keeping grocery prices at astronomical levels. It is vital that Democrats, with some big ol' cojones, rail against the unjust economic system that has created these conditions. Otherwise, we will continue to be viewed as part of it.

Carville then urges the party (as many others have) to walk back from "woke politics" and instead pivot to "a form of economic rage" as the response to Republicans' endless cultural wedge issues. Then he returns to his main theme:

With all this rage, we must also have a bold, simple policy plan -- one that every American can understand. In the richest country in the history of our planet, we should not fear raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour, which had a 74 percent approval rating in 2023. We should not fear an America with free public college tuition, which 63 percent of U.S. adults favored in a 2021 poll. When 62 percent of Americans say their electricity or gas bills have increased in the past year and 80 percent feel powerless to control their utility costs, we should not fear the idea of expanding rural broadband as a public utility. Or when 70 percent of Americans say raising children is too expensive, we should not fear making universal child care a public good. And darn it, we should not fear that running on a platform of seismic economic scale will cost us a general election. We've already lost enough of them by being afraid to try. The era of half-baked political policy is over.

That is pretty stunning, for Carville. A $20 minimum wage? Free public college tuition? Universal child care? These are not the things he is normally known for championing, to put it bluntly. He misses the mark on utility costs, as "expanding rural broadband" is not going to do one thing to fix the problem of sky-high electricity bills, but even so it's a remarkable paragraph for James Carville to have written. He then ends with a call to the barricades:

If you're a student of history, the French Revolution is in the American wind. While the stock market soars, Mr. Trump and decades of corrupt and morally bankrupt Republican economic agendas have splintered the very heart of the American economy. The few are getting vastly richer while a crushing tide drowns the many. Yet even as Mr. Trump's approval sinks to a low point of his second term, Republicans continue to place their faith in an economy built on pillars of sand, while the people scrape by day after day. This can change. It's time we as a party do, too.

Le peuple se lève.

It's worth pointing out (to all the people who regularly advocate for Democrats to embrace "centrism," which usually translates to "move to the right and only champion incremental changes to basic problems") that most of these things could have already been achieved, if Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin had gotten on board with Joe Biden's original "Build Back Better" bill. The bill -- with a whole lot of input from Bernie Sanders -- would indeed have made public college tuition-free, would have provided a big hike in the federal minimum wage, and would have provided not just universal child care but also universal elder care as well. In other words, things could have been different right now if it weren't for those two Democratic "centrists" (both of whom are, thankfully, gone from politics now).

Personally, I've been banging this drum for a long time now. It's not rocket science. If you look at public opinion polls, most of what people lump into the "economic populism" agenda is not just popular with the public, these things are wildly popular. One of the big reasons America politics has been in such a rapid-pendulum-swing era (where the "in" party is regularly replaced by the "out" party) is because neither one of them ever manages to make basic changes which improve average people's lives in big, noticeable ways. They talk a good game on the campaign trail, but then seem to forget all about the rhetoric when they win control.

That's what has to change, and in a big way. Mamdani proved that you can run on a short list of agenda items that promise to make people's lives better in very tangible ways. Whether or not he can deliver on his promises remains to be seen, but it is definitely a good template for other Democrats to use (even with perhaps slightly different agenda items at the top of the list).

If Democrats ran on making child care free (or even affordable to all), Republicans would be forced to explain why this is "socialism" and should be feared. So a voter can weigh: "Socialism is bad... mmm'kay?" against: "Wait... I wouldn't have to pay anything for child care? Really?" If Democrats ran on a $20 minimum wage, it will be up to Republicans to explain why big businesses should be allowed to pay people a pittance for their hard work. Democrats could run demanding a constitutional amendment that stated very simply: "Corporations are not persons under the Constitution, and they are not entitled to the same rights as human beings are." How would Republicans counter that simple idea?

The big open secret to American politics is that there are indeed plenty of issues that most American voters agree upon -- even the ones in red states. Raising the minimum wage almost always wins at the ballot box, even in deeply red states (just to give one example). Free child care would not turn America into the Soviet Union -- it just wouldn't. Instead, it would give hard-working American parents a gigantic financial break. It would improve people's lives in a big and very noticeable way. Balance that against Republicans screaming "Socialism! Communism!" as their only counterargument, and you can see why economic populism can be so politically powerful.

Donald Trump promised to make everything better, economically-speaking. He hasn't. He has made things worse. And people feel it. And yeah, they are angry about it. If even James Carville has realized the depths of this rage, then that should give a green light to all Democrats -- even the ones who timidly embrace the label "centrist" or "moderate" -- to see that these aren't some wild-eyed crackpot ideas. These are ideas that can in fact win elections for the party.

If even James Carville has now seen the light of economic populism, then there may be hope for the party after all. Somewhere, Bernie Sanders is smiling.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant