As former Vice President Joe Biden racked up win after win in Super Tuesday’s 14 Democratic primaries, longtime Democratic strategist James Carville popped up on MSNBC to call upon his nemesis Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to drop out, claiming the “most important constituencies in our party are just not for you.”
Carville, who last month made headlines when he said he was “scared to death” over the democratic-socialist Vermont senator gaining the nomination, on Tuesday night literally saluted Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) for saving the Democratic Party by endorsing Biden before the South Carolina primary.
After observing that candidates Michael Bloomberg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) weren’t “long for this world,” he then wondered if the MSNBC panel—which notably did not consist of any pro-Sanders pundits at the time—would weigh in on whether Democrats should now pressure Sanders to make his exit.
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“You might see Democrats starting to ask Sanders, ‘Look, let’s don’t drag this thing out any more than we have to,’” the former Clinton advisor noted. “People want to get on to the general election. They want to get on to defeating Donald Trump.”
Carville went on to say that if Democrats are going to beat Trump, “We can’t be lollygagging around any longer” and “it seems the party is making a decision.”
MSNBC anchor Brian Williams, meanwhile, presented Carville with the likelihood that Sanders and his supporters would reject that notion and insist that voters “do, in fact, want a revolution.”
“Democrats are not interested in a revolution,” Carville responded. “They are interested in getting this guy out of power as fast as they possibly can. At some point, Sanders ran in 2016, but I think you’re going to start seeing some backlash here… People are not going to be very happy with him after a while.”
Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), now an MSNBC contributor, then asked Carville to address “Bernie’s weaknesses” as they relate to women and African-American voters, who turned out for Biden on Tuesday.
“The African Americans and these women are constituents in our party,” the veteran Democratic operative replied. “They have to be paid attention to. Their voices and their concerns and their votes have to be accounted for and I think that’s a big, big part of what we’re seeing here.”
Carville concluded by delivering a mini-monologue, spiking the football and wondering aloud if Sanders wants Democrats to ask him why he’s staying in the race if the goal is to beat Trump.
“What you’re doing is counterproductive,” he added. “Look, you ran all the way through in 2016 primaries. You had a voice in the 2020 primaries. You carried your campaign, you raised a lot of money. But our most important constituents in this party are just not for you and we have to deal with that and get on to the business of November here.”
