NOW PLAYING
Democratic strategist James Carville on Sunday accused the Democratic Party’s progressive left of being “too hot-headed to know that they’re not popular.”
Carville made the claim in an interview for CNN’s “The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper” while talking about the Michigan Senate Democratic primary race between Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).
Carville said El-Sayed is “highly confident, but he is way left.”
“I see challenges from the ‘progressive left,’ and these people are too hot-headed to know that they’re not popular,” Carville told host Donie O’Sullivan. “People don’t like them. And — but if you get a skewered turnout in a primary, you might end up losing a race which you should’ve never lost in the first place.”
Carville, who admitted to O’Sullivan’s quip of showing contempt for the progressive left during their interview, added that they “don’t win elections” and “just run against other Democrats” instead of Republicans.
“Their only message is ‘we’re going to blow everything up,'” Carville continued.
Carville, in the same interview, pointed to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) two unsuccessful Democratic presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 as examples of failed progressive campaigns.
Popular left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker told O’Sullivan in the same program that losses by Democrats have happened “so publicly and so spectacularly that it has caused people to seek alternatives.”
“Yeah, as opposed to previous neoliberal Democratic candidacies that have been spectacular successes so far. Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016, and Kamala Harris in 2024,” Piker said in reference to progressive losses versus mainstream election losses. “There are a lot of people who are just like, ‘This is not working.'”
Piker has stood by El-Sayed as one of his prominent supporters against Stevens. The latest Emerson College Polling/WLNS/WOODTV poll shows El-Sayed with a 15-point lead over Stevens, with 54 percent support to Stevens’s 39 percent.
A slew of Democratic primary victories won by progressive and democratic socialist candidates in recent months has opened up the debate over the Democratic Party’s big tent. Along with ideological differences, some mainstream Democrats worry that victories in Michigan could hurt the party’s chances of winning in November.
El-Sayed told The Hill last month that “the establishment’s been misjudging our politics for a very long time.”
“We’re talking about people who don’t take the time to actually listen to voters but instead spend their time in D.C. talking to political elites,” he added.
Carville during the CNN interview pushed back on any notion of Piker becoming a mainstay within the Democratic Party. If that happens, “I’m out of here.“
“I have no intention of ever being in the same political party with that guy. Now, I think that a majority –– overwhelming majority of Democrats agree with me, but this idea that we’re going to seize the means of production and this –– just go look at the DSA platform,” he added, referring to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Bernie Sanders Haley Stevens James CarvilleCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Comments: Link copiedMore Campaign News
See All
Campaign California Democratic Party backs billionaire tax despite internal opposition by Ryan Mancini 11 hours ago Campaign / 11 hours ago 
