Sanders: Carville should ‘start his own party’

Campaign Sanders: Carville should ‘start his own party’ Comments: by Ryan Mancini - 08/05/26 12:49 PM ET Comments: Link copied by Ryan Mancini - 08/05/26 12:49 PM ET Comments: Link copied

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday invited Democratic strategist James Carville to “start his own party” after the pundit voiced his disapproval of left-wing candidates running for office.

Sanders, in an interview with CNN’s Abby Phillip, responded to remarks Carville made over the weekend about leaving the Democratic Party in protest if popular left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker becomes a fixture within the party. Piker, a supporter of the senator, has been campaigning with progressives across the country during the midterm primary season.

“Well, that’s not much of a choice. If Mr. Carville doesn’t want to be in my party, the party I belong to, that Piker, that El-Sayed belongs to, he can start his own party,” Sanders said, referring to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who defeated Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in the state’s Democratic primary on Tuesday.

Sanders, who identifies as a democratic socialist, caucuses with Democrats and was registered as a Democrat during his two campaigns for president in 2016 and 2020.

The Vermont lawmaker said he thinks the Democratic Party needs to be a “big tent,” and “I think people like Piker should be welcomed into that, certainly.” He also questioned what kind of Democratic Party voters want to support, pointing to Democratic support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who human rights groups and international bodies have accused of committing genocide and war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu has rejected those claims.

“Do you really want to be in a party where your leadership is taking huge amounts of money from AIPAC, which is supporting an extremist Netanyahu government that many of us believe have committed a genocide?” Sanders said, referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). “You want to be in a party with people who do that?”

“Do you want to be in a party which has not stood up to the AI industry?” he continued. “Because they got a lot of money from AI or from crypto. So, you could pick whatever you want to pick.”

Carville, who rose to fame after working on former President Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, has been openly critical of the rising tide of progressive left and democratic socialist candidates who have won against longtime incumbent Democrats this year. He told CNN on Sunday that these candidates are “too hotheaded to know that they’re not popular.”

“People don’t like them,” Carville told host Donie O’Sullivan. “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.”

The strategist also dismissed Piker’s involvement in Democratic politics, saying he will leave the party if Piker does become a mainstay within the party, pointing to electability as an issue for progressives. He referred to Sanders’s own losses to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 and former President Biden in 2020.

Piker, however, quipped to O’Sullivan to look at the “previous neoliberal Democratic candidacies that have been spectacular successes so far,” referring to Hillary Clinton’s and former Vice President Kamala Harris’s losses to President Trump in 2016 and 2024, respectively.

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