Thursday on MSNBC’s The Beat, former Bill Clinton adviser James Carville said President Joe Biden and the Democrats were using an “idiotic” strategy to sell the Build Back Better agenda, because “they think it’s beneath them to go out and sell.”
“Democrats in Congress are asked to do very popular things,” Carville said. “It doesn’t take much courage to negotiate prescription drug prices. It doesn’t take much courage to raise taxes on the wealthy. It doesn’t take much courage for expanded health care. Somebody has to get into the room, OK. We want to do ten things. We can do five. Take the other five and run them in 2022. They have got to understand the reality is they’re just running around like people in a locker room banging their helmets against the lockers. That is not going to do you any good. You are not going to move any further than Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. So quit this idiotic protesting and hounding them. Tell President Biden get them in the room, get the speaker in there, get the majority leader, let’s hammer something out and what we don’t get, let’s go for it in 2022. This is an idiotic strategy I’m seeing. These are all popular things.”
The host asked, “Is that a failure of Democratic messaging?”
Carville said, “Of course it is. They didn’t get out in the country enough, didn’t sell it enough.” Asked why not, Carville replied, “They think it’s beneath them to go out and sell.”