James Carville is telling Democrats how they can use President Donald Trump‘s chaotic tariff policy against him.
The 80-year-old Democratic strategist shared his masterplan in a New York Times article Monday, arguing that his party now has “an opening” thanks to Trump having screwed up “royally” with his trade war.
“In what will certainly be recorded as one of the most ignorant acts of political leadership in American history, the president of the United States has now willfully damaged the global economy with his tariff chaos,” Carville wrote.
Carville had called on Democrats to “roll over and play dead” in February, arguing that the GOP should be allowed to “crumble” on its own.
“But many Democrats indulged Mr. Trump’s lunacy or allowed themselves to become the story over the government funding and shutdown debate, while the president continued his campaign of chaos and distraction,” Carville wrote Monday.
“Now, Democrats have an opportunity to allow the Republicans to edge closer to collapse as the party in full control of Washington—let’s please not become the story again and get in their way,” he added.
Carville said Americans will likely feel economic “pressure and pain” in the coming months thanks to Trump’s tariffs. “My fellow Democrats, it’s time we transform our party into a projector for the economic pain of the American people,” Carville wrote.
The veteran strategist then laid out a three-part formula for how to do that.
“First,” he wrote, “focus on prices.” Trump, Carville writes, has “formally broken” his promise to bring down inflation and the price of goods. “Making it clear that Trump and the Republicans willingly broke this promise should be in every ad, every podcast talking point, every message we send from now until the midterms,” Carville claimed.
“Second, it’s not about the stock market, it’s about 401(k)s,” he added.
Carville claimed that Democrats should remember that tariffs are a “poison dagger” for those who have seen their lifelong saving efforts damaged by Trump. He also advised the party to highlight the plight of retirees who may be forced to return to the workforce because their life savings have been wiped out—and crucially “connect their pain to the president.”
“And third, make the message local,” Carville writes, calling on party members to publicize hyperlocal stories and largely remove the Democrat “print” from the conversation.
“For the entirety of his tenure in American politics, Donald Trump for better or worse has lived on by the grace of the American people’s faith in his economic leadership,” Carville concluded. “Now it is plain and clear, just as with his failures in Atlantic City or with Trump University, that President Trump never had any idea what he was doing all along.”
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