James Carville Needs to Woo-Sah: A Lesson in Big Tent Politics and Democratic Legitimacy [View all]

Kristoffer Ealy

Let me be upfront about something before I start roasting James Carville. I actually understand where he’s coming from. The anxiety he’s expressing about the direction of the Democratic Party is not entirely imagined. There are real ideological tensions inside this coalition, real disagreements about strategy, and real questions about what kind of party Democrats want to be heading into November and beyond.

None of that is crazy. I teach political behavior for a living, so I spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about exactly these kinds of intraparty fights. But understanding where someone is coming from does not obligate me to pretend they have not wandered off the map. And this week, James Carville wandered.

And with all of that understood and fully acknowledged — James Carville needs to take a deep breath, find his inner peace, woo-sah, and sit down. Because what we witnessed this week was not a hostile takeover. What we witnessed was democracy.

On June 23, 2026, three candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani swept their Democratic primary races. Former City Comptroller Brad Lander defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th Congressional District. Community organizer and democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier knocked off five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the 13th Congressional District. And State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez won the open race to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez in the 7th Congressional District. All three districts are heavily Democratic. All three candidates are now the Democratic nominees heading into November. The establishment — including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — backed the losing side in multiple races. And judging by some of the reactions afterward, you would have thought Mamdani had personally repossessed Democratic headquarters, hung a portrait of Karl Marx in the lobby, and started assigning everyone to a neighborhood collective.

https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/james-carville-needs-to-woo-sah-a