James Carville said democratic socialists are “a bridge too far” for the Democratic Party and described them as “so f***ing stupid.” Bernie Sanders told CNN’s Abby Phillip: “If Mr. Carville doesn’t want to be in my party, the party that I belong to, that Piker, that El-Sayed belongs to, he can start his own party.” This is where the Democratic Party is the week after Michigan nominated its first democratic socialist Senate candidate, in a state Trump won in 2024.
Carville’s position is the one he has held for three decades without modification. The party’s left flank costs general elections. Democratic socialists run against other Democrats, not Republicans. Their message is “we’re going to blow everything up.” He said this again this week, with the same vocabulary he uses every time, which now includes expletives about the intelligence of the people he is criticizing, because the cycle of them winning primaries and him criticizing them has produced a level of exasperation that his earlier vocabulary did not adequately express. Sanders ran for president twice and lost by a lot, Carville noted. Sanders’s response was that Carville can leave.
The specific democratic socialist who triggered this week’s version of the exchange is Abdul El-Sayed, who won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary Tuesday to become the first DSA-backed Senate nominee in American history. El-Sayed earned $686,069 in 2025 while running on economic justice, called female Democratic establishment politicians “ogres on a pike,” and refused to release his tax returns. Hasan Piker, who has 2.5 million Twitch followers and campaigned with El-Sayed, was also cited by Carville as evidence of the problem. Piker’s response was to campaign more. Sanders’s response was to tell Carville to leave.
The general election opponent is Mike Rogers, the Republican who described El-Sayed as “the most radical, extreme candidate I have ever seen nominated by a major party.” Carville agrees with Rogers on this point. Neither of them has a vote in the Michigan Democratic primary, which is now over.
Carville drew the line. Michigan crossed it. Sanders told Carville where the door is.
When the Democratic Party’s most famous strategist and its most famous socialist are publicly telling each other to leave, who exactly is running the party?
Sources
HuffPost: Bernie Sanders Tells James Carville To ‘Start His Own Party’
Fox News: James Carville says socialist Democrat shouldn’t be in the party
Fox News: Fox News Digital News Quiz, August 7, 2026
