Filmed October 1, 2025
BILL KRISTOL:
Hi, Bill Kristol here, welcome back to Conversations. I’m very pleased to be joined again today by my friend James Carville, who is going out of his way to join us here on October 1st, from, I believe he’s in Rome right now, and despite the time difference is here to discuss the state of our politics. So, I hate to detract from your vacation for an hour to get into a more depressing topic, but whatever, maybe you’ll cheer us all up, James. I don’t know.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Yeah. You can’t get away from it, okay? You’re still on your computer, you sit in the lobby at a hotel, people… You can’t escape this, there’s no such thing. So, doesn’t do any good.
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, I don’t know if that’s reassuring or the opposite, but that’s interesting to hear. Let’s begin. It’s October 1st, yesterday, we’ll talk about the Republican Party, Democratic Party, how things look for ’26, ’28, but I thought I’d just get your quick reaction as a former Marine to President Trump and Pete Hegseth’s speeches yesterday at Quantico. Did you watch any of it, what’d you make of that?
JAMES CARVILLE:
I obviously didn’t watch the whole thing, I don’t have a total tolerance for pain. I was actually more aghast at what Hegseth said. And I’ll tell you what was really… So, everybody goes through… You’re right, I was a Marine 60 years ago, whatever, and your son. Okay, everybody thinks, well, I had it hard, and we were… By the way, my wife and I were at Parris Island in 2022, for a behind the curtain tour. I got news for you, they’re much better trained than we were. Okay? And so, you’re going out and you’re telling your team, this is Team United States, these are our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and you said, “You’re no, good, you’re fat, you’re soft,” and that’s insane. The Secretary of Defense is telling our own people that they’re no good and telling the generals they’re all fat and lazy.
I’ll give you a little experiment. Just look up, pick a naval base, pick a Marine Corps base, pick a Army post or whatever, and look at the Wikipedia entry of the commanding general, or the commanding admiral. Okay? I had news for you, Pete… man these people have all, it’s just ridiculous that you tell your own people that you are no good. It was insane. The whole idea of doing it was insane, but you would think somebody get up and say, look, we’re really good, but we can be better if we do the following three things. I just think it was… And then Trump’s 57-minute grievance ramble… Was it any worse than what you saw at the UN? I don’t know. I can’t grade it.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. And Trump, I think the only thing that alarmed me is to actually say to the military, “One of your main jobs is going to be dealing with the enemy within, the enemy here at home,” it’s stuff he’s said before, but to say it directly to these general and flag officers is pretty astonishing. I think they do not agree with that.
JAMES CARVILLE:
No.
BILL KRISTOL:
But one thing that worries me the most is after three years of Hegseth supervising and monkeying with promotion boards and firing and hiring people, I don’t know, will we have a senior officer corps that’s as reliable, I would say, as the current one seems to be? That’s something to really think about.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Absolutely. And look, almost 20% of armed forces right now are females, but I got to tell you, aircraft carrier, the person that’s landing the planes, is very possibly a female, all across the whole spectrum of stuff. And then he says, anybody that’s Black… Oh, come on, man. The one thing that the military tries to stress is unit cohesion, that’s just part of their ethos, it’s always been part of the ethos. See, if the Secretary of Defense said, “If somebody is not a white male, they’re a suspect.” Come on. I actually feel sorry for the leadership that has to go back to wherever they were, and training troops, and training officers, and training people, I can’t imagine how a message like this would set in for somebody. I can’t think it’d be anything other than utterly depressing. They don’t like America, that’s what I really believe.
They don’t like the people that live in this country, they don’t like our customs, they don’t like our laws, they don’t like the traditions, they don’t like the Constitution, they don’t like the… It’s amazing that we’ve come to a place… but I genuinely believe that most of the people in the Trump administration do not like the United States. They don’t pull for us, I really believe that.
BILL KRISTOL:
No, that’s really well said and powerful.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I believe it.
BILL KRISTOL:
It’s a better summary of what we saw than a lot of the other stuff, including the stuff that I’ve been writing and saying, that’s very perceptive. It is remarkable. Hegseth said, “The whole diversity stuff is a myth, we’re for unity.” Has there ever been a more divisive Secretary of Defense, and setting one part of the force against the other, against another, as you say, individuals against each other, undermining the authority of those now in command, who incidentally have served in times of war? If you’re now in the general or flag officer corps, you’ve been in, what, 30 years probably? So, you were a junior officer probably or a middle level officer in Iraq or Afghanistan. These people have seen a lot of tough combat the people he’s speaking down to.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Yes. But look up not only self-combat, but almost to a person, they’re all highly decorated, they’re all highly educated, like anybody else, they can have a herd mentality, they can be wrong about things, there’s nothing… One of the things that anybody, when people say, I’m just going to do what the general say I should do. No, no, no, no, that’s not a good idea. Okay, stop right there. I’m going to listen to what the general say I should do, but much better. But this current message is, you don’t know anything, and I’m a drunk, and I’ve knocked people up, and I’ve done this, so pay attention… Again, the only theory that explains everything is they don’t like the United States, they really don’t like anything about the country, and they particularly don’t like, in their mind, what the country has become.
BILL KRISTOL:
Right.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Right? They might like the 1957 United States.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. Or some cartoon version of it that they’re thinking back to.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Right.
BILL KRISTOL:
Okay, so that’s actually very interesting, I’ve got to say, and thought-provoking. But let’s begin with the Republic, let’s talk about politics, and I guess begin with the Trump administration and the Republican Party and the MAGA movement, they’re in charge, they control everything for now. Are they strong? Are they weak? What part of each of those should one focus on?
JAMES CARVILLE:
Let’s start with the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.
BILL KRISTOL:
Okay.
JAMES CARVILLE:
From that vantage point. First of all, in the sense of a political party, there’s no such thing as the Republican Party, it’s a personality cult. They don’t care what John Thune or Mike Johnson thinks about the… They don’t even bring them in, they literally don’t even include them in a conversation. And it’s utterly clear that they’re in a personality cult. The Democratic Party is cumbersome because it’s a coalition, and it’s a coalition that has not found its way yet. It’s a coalition in search of itself. And the combination of that is going to lead to some pretty convoluted things, which we’re seeing now. And I think the Democrats—I wrote earlier this year—should right now be only unifying the opposition to the Big, Bad, Beautiful Bill and Trumpism in general.
And people will say, “Well James, you’re just telling us what you’re against, you’re not telling us what you’re for.” Actually, you’re correct. But until we flush out in 2028 primaries, because I don’t think Democrats can know who they are until Democratic primary voters weigh in and decide who we are. It’s not up to me to say what the Democratic Party should be, it’s for eight people to run for president and then have Democratic primary voters pick one, and then that’s what the party becomes.
BILL KRISTOL:
Eight people seems like a—
JAMES CARVILLE:
We can’t do [inaudible] process.
BILL KRISTOL:
More like 18 people probably, or 28 people to start with.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Well, we know, they’ll start with 18, by the middle of December it’ll be down to nine, by January the 2nd… But it’ll all be decided based on polling, fundraising, support, crowds, all the amorphous stuff that goes in. But they got to pick their direction, the party has to pick the different constituencies, they’ve got to say, “This is the direction we want to go in.”
BILL KRISTOL:
So, do you basically, you seem to be saying, but correct me if I’m wrong, that the disunity, if you want to put it that way, the disarray in Democratic ranks, which is natural when you don’t control the executive branch or any House of Congress, I think, isn’t a huge problem for ’26 for the midterm, it’s a 2028 problem or challenge that a presidential nominee and the presidential primaries has to solve. But they can go through, they can have a good enough year in 2026 in their current state basically?
JAMES CARVILLE:
I don’t think I disagree with that, Bill, I would call it 2028 opportunity.
BILL KRISTOL:
Okay.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Because we haven’t had… So, my theory of politics is people get involved at a young age in politics, they kind of pick a side, not based on the great issues of debates of today, but an inspiring figure. So, maybe I saw Kennedy, maybe you saw Eisenhower or Reagan or Goldwater, and you said, “I’m inspired by this.” All right. We have not had an inspiring candidate since 2012. And so, it’s an opportunity that when everybody gets out there and competes, and it gets flushed out, and voters start deciding and start picking a side that somebody will look strong and inspirational. We don’t have that right now. And you can’t force it, it can only come with a presidential nominee. And when you try to force it, it doesn’t look good because it’s impossible to do. And I hope everybody runs from every faction of the party.
I just read in The Times an academic, I forgot his name, talking about true populism is the future of the Democratic Party, and he talks about Mamdani, and he talks about Bernie Sanders. He never talks about Spanberger, he never talks about Sherrill, he never talks about Elissa Slotkin and Rubén Gallego, and he never mentions the fact that Bernie ran for president, actually did not do that well. All right? The main thing that people need to understand is the most left-wing person has never won a Democratic nomination since McGovern, and that was 1972. Everybody has a vested interest, and said, “Oh, you just wait, AOC is going to win the thing, or…” I hope they run, I don’t think they will do near as well as other people do, but we have to have a decision by Democratic primary voters, it’s the only way we can get out of this.
BILL KRISTOL:
No, that’s so interesting. So, what’s your view on 2026, is that about Trump? Is that—
JAMES CARVILLE:
It’s all about Trump. I can’t imagine anything, and particularly just every day he just keeps jacking the stakes up, every day… It’s hard for me to imagine a voter that votes in 2026 that doesn’t have Trump, what this is on their mind. Yes. And by the way, it generally is. All, and particularly first year off elections, are about incumbent president, I think we’ll get some pretty good guidance in Virginia, and I think yes… And New Jersey also. Because I think at the end of the day, they’re probably going to be voting more on Trump than they are with statewide issues. I could be wrong, but that’s what I think.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, and I’m here in Virginia, it’s my sense. At least the marginal voters. Obviously there’s a ton of voters who care a lot about various policies here in Virginia, one way or the other, and they vote every time. But I got to think the additional voters, the marginal voters are coming out maybe in some cases for Trump, but I think here in Virginia more against him. But we’ll see, I guess.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Yeah. We’ll see.
BILL KRISTOL:
Are you pretty optimistic about 2026, and what dynamics do you expect? What are we now 14 months from that? What do you think the key dynamics are? We got a government shutdown that just began, there’s a bunch of issues, there’s a bunch of other things…
JAMES CARVILLE:
Well, so let’s talk about the government shutdown. I do think that the Democrats have the better hand. I know, because I used to play bridge, and you can have the better hand, which has happened to me a lot, and I’ve lost. Okay? I didn’t run Trumps, I didn’t count my loses, or I didn’t finesse right. So, all things being equal, I think that we should probably come out ahead, where this goes. But I don’t know that, and I think there’s so much left between now and November of 2026, and at the speed that things are going economically, foreign policy, culturally, socially, anything else, there’s a lot left before we get to November 2026.
But I will say this, if the Democrats don’t do well, the party may just totally fracture because people will say, “Well, if we can’t win in this environment, what the hell can we do?” The low image of the party is, I think, totally related to losing the election, and I see this analysis that the party’s dead, it’s got nothing… All right, first of all, in 2024, Harris refused to say she would change anything from Biden, of course, I’ll go into what she’s saying now, she said, “We’re not going to change anything.” And we were stuck with the cultural baggage of 2019 and 2020 pretty clearly and legitimately. We lost by a point and a half, one point. We actually picked up a house seat or two. We actually won Senate seats in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, which were all states that Trump was carrying at the time. That’s not a party in collapse. It’s a party with a disappointing election return, I’ll concede that. But we were not wiped off the map in 2024, not like 1980 or 2008. Those were like monster years. And of course, they were followed by ’82 and 2010 and we were followed by 1994. So I think that the idea that the whole party is in the doldrums and is nowhere is really not… You wouldn’t pick up a house seat if you were collapsing. I think maybe we picked up two, I don’t remember. And we lost Pennsylvania in the Senate, but barely. And that’s not evidence of collapse, I’m sorry.
BILL KRISTOL:
No, that certainly sounds right to me. Any issues you think particularly potent over the next… I mean, 14 months is a long time, but do you agree with the conventional view that healthcare… You articulated this way back in ’92. The economy and healthcare kind of number one and number two, the cultural stuff. How powerful is that? I mean, or other things, just the authoritarianism, ICE? I mean, what’s your sort of… Where are you on the, which issues should the Democrats stress or do they not even have to resolve that?
JAMES CARVILLE:
I always think economic issues, I don’t think there’s much… I think to most people healthcare is economic issue. They don’t have a 401k and a blood work up and look at them as something different. It’s on a mesh and I think a human being has too many economic interactions in a day that it’s always going to be paramount in people’s minds. Some of the stuff that the Democrats came out for in the early part of this decade, at the end of the last decade were just insane. I just want to get someone that… Like who advised Harris when she was running for president in 2019? I mean, some of the stuff is so… And you said, “They’re just making this up.” And then you go look into it. No, they’re actually not making it up. Okay. People were talking about transition surgery for prisoners and hopefully, and I don’t think that’s where the Democratic primary voter is, but we got to settle this in 2028 particularly. All this has to be settled and has to be adjudicated by Democratic primary voters. And I’m very confident that there’ll be a wise adjudication here, but we can’t… It’s gotten out… Too many people followed this nonsense in my view, and it’s hurt. It’s caused real damage to the party brand. But remember in spite of that, in spite of an unpopular incumbent, in spite of a 68% wrong track number, we only got to come back a point and a half or 0.7, I guess, or to be more accurate about it. If we get someone, and I think we will, that just talks in inspiring, normal, uplifting messaging, I think we’ll be fine.
BILL KRISTOL:
And the Republican Party you said, isn’t a real party. It’s a cult of personality for Trump, but so let’s talk about what that is on the other side, and Trump has some strengths politically and some weaknesses. And MAGA—you stressed this over a year and a half ago, I think in our conversation, people didn’t pick up on it enough in my opinion—that MAGA was weaker than Trump. But talk a little bit about that. I mean, is Trump himself a little weaker than he was? Does he have some magic ability to grab a side of the hat? What about the whole administration, the corruption? What strikes you about it?
JAMES CARVILLE:
There was a Times/Siena poll, which I think is pretty good. I mean, and it’s confirming… he’s about where he was at this point in his first term. And there are more people that don’t like him than like him. My own view is MAGA is stronger than Trump if he were to exit American politics—I’m not wishing bad health on anybody—for whatever reason. The whole fight in 2028 would be who’s the most MAGA? And that’s going to be the entire thing. So I think he’s just changed Republican politics for the foreseeable future. That’s what I really believe. And the one thing he does do is he brings them out to vote and we’ll see if he can bring them out in 2026 and we’ll see if he brings them out in Virginia. But generally he doesn’t do that very well. Remember 2022 was a really disappointing year for the Republicans. I mean, really disappointing. I mean historically, everything. So there’s a lot of resistance to this in the country. And you saw it in 2022 pretty clearly, which by old standards should have been a blowout.
BILL KRISTOL:
And when you say MAGA is stronger than Trump, I think yeah, you’re saying it sort of out will outlast Trump where they’ll fight to be the heir to Trump in MAGA world.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Absolutely.
BILL KRISTOL:
Do you think that the people though in MAGA and the administration, aren’t they a little bit of a drag on Trump to some degree? Or is Trump so dominant, no one even cares about Vance or the cabinet secretaries or Hegseth or anyone else?
JAMES CARVILLE:
Look at the cabinet. So how does a normal person have any confidence in this? But I don’t think they care. I really don’t. I don’t think it matters who Brooke Rollins is at all. I mean, you have Tom Homan literally taking a $50,000 brown bag of cash. I mean, that’s like 1952 Louisiana stuff. I mean, Trump’s sophisticated. They made a 55 billion dollar deal, but Jared, they put him on with the Saudis. Jared’s not interested in the $50,000 in a brown paper bag. I mean, his horizons are much more advanced than that, to say the least. And so is Trump that Pfizer had to give him a discount on Trump Rx prescriptions or something. I swear I read that. I hope I didn’t misread it, but it sounds true.
BILL KRISTOL:
I mean, are you surprised? I guess we’ve been through politics quite a while and corruption scandals explode and sometimes they fade away and sometimes they bring people down and they have to be dealt with. I don’t know, the Trump administration and Trump personally and the family, it just seems not to be an issue. It’s kind of astonishing. I mean, it’s at a scale so far beyond anything any of us have ever seen or dreamed of, I think.
JAMES CARVILLE:
It’s almost funny because we all… Remember the great Neil Bush SNL scandal?
BILL KRISTOL:
I forgot, well, yeah, I hadn’t. But now that you mention it, yes.
JAMES CARVILLE:
It comes back. Or Johnny Chung raising money in the White… Whatever. I mean the Mena Airport, I mean the stuff that we would explode into some… We’re almost laughable. Okay? This just goes to show you if you steal a hundred dollars, you’re in trouble. If you steal a hundred billion dollars, no one can digest it. I do think that when this is unearthed and historians write about this period, the level of corruption, everything is going to be known as the age of this, the age of that. I think this period, the mid 2020s is going to be known for its corruption more than anything else in ways that we can… I mean, the Teapot Dome scandal, I looked it up. It was about some oil leases in Wisconsin or Crédit Mobilier. I mean, this is all so petty. Whitewater. Oh God, okay. Like a $50,000 land deal.
I don’t think we can comprehend the level and the depth of the corruption that’s happening and not the normal corruption of the lobbyists running Washington and the special interests. I mean this is just out-and-out two-hand brown paper bag cash stealing, and so far they’re getting away with it.
BILL KRISTOL:
Do you agree that a kind of economic populist issue, obviously how you define, that’s a big question, but a kind of economic populist, I don’t know, attitude, let’s put it that way on the part of the Democrats would be important that they can’t just be the party that’s defending the current elite institutions, the old elite institutions against the new Trump MAGA elite institutions or non-institutions?
JAMES CARVILLE:
I mean, the whole Democratic message, I think the winning message is going to be that everybody has lapsed in to doing what they can for the few, and we’ve forgotten the common person should have a seat and a view at the table and that the system is stacked against you. And I think people will believe that. And I think the more successful Democratic candidates will talk about there’s a power imbalance in this country where the people that have the most power continue to accumulate the most power, and the people that have the least power continues to lose power.
And I can’t tell you that in four years, I can reverse the whole thing, but I could certainly change the trajectory. And every day we make decisions and these decisions are made not for the people who use drugs but are made by the people who sell drugs. The decisions we make are not for the people who borrow money, it’s the people who lend money. The decisions we make… You can just go through the whole thing. And what I’d like to do is anybody would admit that the power imbalance has gotten severely skewered and in my opinion, the wrong way. And I think there are things that we can do to bring us back more to mainstream. I mean, that way you can talk about the mainstream, you can talk about it without sounding like you’re far… You could just talk about we’ve gotten out of kilter. We need to balance it. And I think people would be very receptive to that.
BILL KRISTOL:
And do you think that message is more easily delivered by a governor as opposed to a senator or an outsider? Does it not matter? It just depends on—
JAMES CARVILLE:
I don’t think it matters.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I really don’t. I don’t think that somebody’s going want to know, “Well, what did you do as Governor Illinois?” Or Governor of Kentucky or Michigan or Maryland or Pennsylvania, wherever you ran. Okay. I mean, they’ll say, “Well, we brought crime down by 24.2% and we created jobs.” Then that’s fine. That’s not what’s going to decide this. Okay? That’s just not at the end. I think most of them have admirable records that they can talk about.
BILL KRISTOL:
I’m so glad to hear you say that because I’ve spent years, I feel like arguing with people about this. I think in my generation, yours too, as we came up, Reagan wins. He’s governor, former governor of California, Clinton wins, governor of Arkansas, Bush wins, Governor of Texas. And it became this kind of mythology that governors are great candidates. And I mean, you and I were involved or around at least for those campaigns. I mean, none of them won because he was a governor. Reagan won because he was the leader of a popular conservative movement. Clinton won because he was an extremely talented politician. You have to have the credential having run something maybe, having been elected to something certainly. And Bush won because he was Bush. But people do have this kind of obsession with the governors that I think it’s a little overdone, honestly.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I think it’s totally overdone. But remember, Reagan gave a speech at the ’64 Republican Convention. He was going to run in ’68. He ran in ’76. I mean, he was a prototype of what an ambitious politician should be, and he was governor of California, but I don’t think he won because of his record as governor of California. I think he won because he had a message of change and there was a sense that he was a different kind… He was a great communicator. And I don’t think Clinton won on the Arkansas record.
BILL KRISTOL:
I mean, we in the Bush White House thought that would be a big vulnerability for Clinton, and we wasted God knows how many millions of dollars and hours of the President’s time attacking the Clinton-Arkansas record, which of course I could tell you that had no effect on anything.
JAMES CARVILLE:
No, the “failed governor of a small state.”
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, that was good. That was a good line.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I remember that… God-dammit. Come on. I know the guy, David Maraniss wrote a story about Clinton raised taxes 125 times, and Betsy writes it, “No, it’s actually 128.” Now, they would call an increase in the parking fee at Oaklawn Racetrack a tax, but all of that, we thought too, “Oh, my God.” People vote more on a direction and a feeling than they do on a specific policy proposal. We had a 93-page economic plan that I didn’t read a sentence of, but it’s called Putting People First. Okay.
BILL KRISTOL:
I remember the big meetings there in Little Rock where the people were flying in. The economists all over the country.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Oh, yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. Very impressive.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Democrats love, the Clintons especially, are always enamored with expertise that there is a solution. You have a problem. Okay. You get really smart people and sometimes they’re actually right. Okay?
BILL KRISTOL:
Right.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I was talking to somebody, the whole essence of Clintonism, I know because I’ve listened to the conversation and everything, is they have almost childlike belief that training and education are the answers to all of our problems. That the answer to social dysfunction, economic stagnation, family breakup, crime, everything, if you cut a Clintonite open, if we just did job training and we did education better and we taught people how to read better earlier, and that’s really what’s at the core of it. And it’s actually not a bad philosophy of life. It really isn’t. And they also believe fervently that the economy wanted predictability above everything else. That if you said, “Look, these are the rules, this is the tax rate, this is what you have to do,” that businesses would prefer that than having a favorable policy today in their minds but not knowing what it’ll be tomorrow. I think both of those things are not a bad starting place.
BILL KRISTOL:
That’s interesting. I mean, Clinton was young. People forget how… Certainly, we in the Bush White House could see the age difference. I think some of us thought it might help Bush, experience, gravitas. It didn’t help, I don’t think. And then of course W was pretty young and then Obama was younger. I think it all got distorted a little bit with Biden versus Trump, twice I guess. And then Harris, somewhat younger, but running really as Biden’s VP. Do you have the view that the time to get down to a younger generation? I mean, obviously it’s going to be someone younger than Biden and Trump. But I mean, how important is that? Or could it be someone who’s older as long as they have a vision for the future and all that stuff?
JAMES CARVILLE:
I think if all things being almost equal, I think the party will go with someone younger. But it has to be in range. And I do think that the image of the Democratic Party, in people’s mind, this I know, is that it’s a urban and old party.
And that’s why I want to have a presidential nominating thing because we have a lot of people. And sometimes these people call me and say something. My advice, I want all of you to run. Just get up there. You do more service by running and showing people that you can string a sentence together, that you know something about the United States beyond coastal cities, and you have some degree of energy and spunk and movement about you. But right now, that’s what people think about us. And I know that from a thousand people calling me looking at a thousand focus groups. When you mention the Democrats, people said, “Well, I don’t know. They’re for the cities and they’re old.”
BILL KRISTOL:
That’s really interesting. I mean, the hangover from the previous election or in this case the previous administration… I don’t know how long.. How long does it last? I feel like maybe it goes away by the time you get through ’26. But I don’t know.
JAMES CARVILLE:
When you win, it goes away. It sounds so absurd to say this, but people have to be reminded. In politics, winning is everything. If you lose, your own people don’t like you. It doesn’t do any good. And if the Democrats have a good 2026, the image of the party will pop up. All of the bad polling is a result of Democrats do not like their party because they lost. Why would I like them? And the way that you cure that is, well, you win.
BILL KRISTOL:
And what does winning in ’26 look like, I mean, just practically?
JAMES CARVILLE:
I think it’s got to be more than 20 seats.
BILL KRISTOL:
In the house?
JAMES CARVILLE:
Yes. And I think the Senate, if we stay on the same trajectory, I think the Senate is more of a possibility, to boost other people. And I base that, obviously North Carolina should be, that’s one probable pick op. Actually, I think Maine probably is. I think Collins has probably, she’s been pretty successful. I’m going to have to have to hand it off to her in one sense, but I think that’s kind of run out.
The place I’m really more bullish on is Iowa. And they’ve really gotten hurt by… I mean, the Trump policies have hit Iowa particularly hard, particularly tariffs and particularly the immigration stuff. And soybeans are just, I mean, people forget how bad a shape a lot of the agricultural sectors in. Now, Trump is talking about he’s going to give the farmers who are losing money… But if you think about a farm state, it’s not just farmers, it’s people that supply them. It’s the seed store, it’s the tractor store, it’s the mechanic, it’s the dry cleaner. It’s anything that you can think of. The insurance, crop insurance. In these agricultural states in ways that a lot of people can’t understand, it’s all intertwined. And American agriculture is in trouble and prices are not great. The place that I think, and I am a betting person, it would take good odds, but I would bet on Mississippi.
BILL KRISTOL:
Wow. That’s interesting.
JAMES CARVILLE:
So Biden was president in 2023. It was a governors’ race. The Democrats came within two points. That was with a president in 2023, probably had a wide approval of 16. I don’t know. Okay, I’m just pulling something out. The climate is going to be better. Remember Mississippi is by far the blackest state. It’s 38.5 population. Now, they can’t get the vote out to much above 31, 31 share. But if they can do that, they’re within striking distance. I mean, Mike Espy got like 46 and a half. And Cindy Hyde Smith is a particularly weak incumbent.
Obviously Texas is always… Don’t forget Alaska. Don’t forget Alaska. And if you have a big year… Sherwood ran, he ran so far ahead of Harris, it wasn’t even funny. I mean he lost, but his top line was significantly better. I mean, he really over-performed. So I would certainly say some of these things are a stretch. But if it’s a good year, and you and I have been through a lot of good or bad years, depending on the way you look at it, a lot of stuff happens in big years. Don’t kid yourself.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. People afterwards write these learned treatises about the wave and how it was coming for 18 months. But actually, in my experience, people do not see it coming. And people in Virginia, in 2006, the state I live in, that were telling George Allen was safe. I mean, he was running against Jim Webb, a kind of flaky ex-Reagan administration guy who was the Democratic nominee. Allen, a very popular ex-governor, incumbent senator, likely presidential candidate in ’08. He made one stupid mistake on the campaign trail, maybe more than one, a couple, a little—
JAMES CARVILLE:
The tracker in that is a real hero. His name was [S.R.] Sidarth. He was like the first on a track as he called it. Macaca, I think was like a—
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, Allen called him that. Maybe not even realizing it seemed like it was insulting.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I’ll never forget that story. I just, yeah, trackers are big in the lower campaigns.
BILL KRISTOL:
But I remember people here of Virginia saying, “Oh, there’s no chance he’ll lose.” And you get a wave, all kinds of stuff starts happening. And these states, which everyone has written off, Democrats won in these states not that long ago. I mean, Iowa had a Democratic governor. It’s not like people never voted for a Democrat in most of these states. So people over—
JAMES CARVILLE:
You can’t guarantee anything in politics. Democrats almost guaranteed to win a governorship in Iowa. That, I would say that—
BILL KRISTOL:
The question is, federal officers are tougher, right, in the current polarized environment?
JAMES CARVILLE:
They’re nationalized, they’re tougher. Look at Kentucky. Republicans, look at Vermont. I mean, you can get some quirks, but they generally at the state level, not the fed. But if the year is as big as it might be, we don’t know, then a lot of stuff is going to happen. A lot.
BILL KRISTOL:
When do you think we start to see that? I mean, we’re seeing Democrats ahead by a few points in the generic, which is okay, I think, for Democrats. But in your experience, when does this stuff start to really hit? Or is it just hard to predict?
JAMES CARVILLE:
Well, first of all, we know it’s not going to end up 47/44. Okay. The first rule of politics, it sounds so elementary is almost condescending. On election day it has to add up to 100. It can’t not. And the contribution of the white, the Black combined, ethnic, gender, education, it all has to add up to 100. It’s the first rule of politics.
So if you say yourself, we go into it’s Labor Day of 2026, and the better… the average of the generic, how important it is, people can argue, but it’s something, and it’s 48/44. Now, important to know the Democrats have to win by a certain percentage over 50, which is gerrymandering. But if you’re up 48/44 on Labor Day, you’re going to have a monster year. Because you’re probably-
BILL KRISTOL:
Interesting.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Yeah. Yes. And the most important number to pay attention to is the incumbent party number. Because if you are at Labor Day of 2026, you’re not voting for the party with all the power, you’re probably not going to change your mind. Now, you may not vote, but I think if you take the average of the better post-Labor Day 2026 polls, whatever the Republicans are getting, they’re going to get that and not much more.
BILL KRISTOL:
Oh, that’s interesting.
JAMES CARVILLE:
But it never adds up to 100. It can’t not add up to 100 on election day.
BILL KRISTOL:
No. But that’s good guidance to look at the Republican number on Labor Day. So we’ll do that.
JAMES CARVILLE:
It’s more determined, more determined. And I don’t know, in somebody’s race is like, let’s just take Virginia, by any stretch of imagination, Sears is the incumbent. There’s a Republican governor, there’s a Republican president. And—
BILL KRISTOL:
She’s the lieutenant governor, so yeah, literally.
JAMES CARVILLE:
She’s the lieutenant governor. If you ain’t voting for her yet, I don’t think you’re going to get there between now and the election day. Now, it’s a little bit more difficult in New Jersey, because obviously… I saw this bill, and actually when I thought about it’s not surprising, but I never thought about, New Jersey has never elected a party to a third term in a hundred years. So that’s probably going to be an indication. So clearly Democrats run the state. [Inaudible] Trump didn’t come. That’s a question that’s going to get answered here in a little bit more than a month actually.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, it’s amazing how soon… And Sherrill’s running against a good Republican candidate, I would say, probably a little… I mean Trump—
JAMES CARVILLE:
Yeah. She’s seasoned. She’s run before. She’d run statewide. They got her caught up in a thing. I am pretty sure she’ll be able to extricate herself from this pretty effectively. But Ciattarelli really is very aggressive. And Democrats had a pretty contentious primary, and not everybody left that totally happy. So it’s going to be instructive.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.
JAMES CARVILLE:
The fashionable thing that I hear from all of our Democratic friends is, “Yeah, James, Virginia’s fine, but I don’t know about New Jersey. I’m really worried.” Actually, I’m not yet, but I might get that. But I just think Trump is just too dominant a figure that that’s not going to be first and foremost on people’s minds.
BILL KRISTOL:
But it will be a test, as you say, because they could want to vote against the incumbent Democrats. And they have been in—
JAMES CARVILLE:
I must tell you, there’s Democratic angst about New Jersey, but it doesn’t take much to get… Democratic angst is the easiest thing to get. Oh, God.
BILL KRISTOL:
Even I’ve seen it too. A couple of final questions.
JAMES CARVILLE:
All right.
BILL KRISTOL:
You can talk this one if you want, but I mean, any particular people you would watch for, in either, party for ’28? Just strike you as just candidate without committing obviously right now or without even your own preferences, just whose candidate skills strike you, whose absence of candidate skills maybe strike you?
JAMES CARVILLE:
If were a Republican, it was any different time, I would say somebody like Brian Kemp, who’s just run over everything. And it’s kind of a swing state and he’s [inaudible]. But Brian Kemp has… So it’s hard to know in the Congress because they don’t have an opinion. So you have no idea. They could be the most talented person in the world in the Senate, but it doesn’t matter.
BILL KRISTOL:
On the Republican side, yeah.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I’ll say this, and every time I name names I get into trouble. I have never seen, and I mean this as sincerely as I can say it, more talent in one party at the sub… right at the potential presidential level, than exists in today’s Democratic party. I think when these guys get out there and people see them, their reaction is going to be, “Shit, I didn’t know these guys were out there. I didn’t realize this.” Because they haven’t seen a Democratic presidential nominee form a sentence in a long time. All right, might be articulate, but they never… And I think they’re going to see five or six people that they’re not, “Well God, that guy’s got something to say.” And as you know, in politics, if you’re running against other talented people, it only makes you more talented. It will drive me nuts, we never had a contested process in 2024. Yes, we could have done it late. And now you have Harris and Pete Buttigieg saying, “Well, somebody should have talked Biden out of running.” Well, thank you, son of a bitch.
BILL KRISTOL:
Believe you and I did our best on that.
JAMES CARVILLE:
We did our best.
BILL KRISTOL:
I don’t think you got a lot of thank you calls from, even privately, from people like Vice President Harris.
JAMES CARVILLE:
We were trying to start something, and I’ll never forget it, I chose, I was in Mississippi, and God, we got to try something else here. And now they’re all coming in saying, “Well, it wasn’t up to me to say anything.” Then who was it? I’ve never been pro anti-Buttigieg that much, I think he’s smart. But that just totally… What did surprise me, and I think it surprised you, is Harris’s book has done as well as it has.
BILL KRISTOL:
I haven’t looked. Is that right?
JAMES CARVILLE:
Oh, the story. Mike Allen texted me. And I know something about publishing. She sold like 350,000 books.
BILL KRISTOL:
Wow.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I mean, I’m [inaudible]. I didn’t see that coming. If you’d asked me, I’d thought the book would be a bus.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. It’s funny how these things happen. It doesn’t always translate into votes, I suppose, though, right?
JAMES CARVILLE:
I didn’t think that there were people that passed, they want to hear a story, I guess. But I was surprised.
BILL KRISTOL:
I feel like there’s a lot of sense that she was treated badly, which I don’t disagree with incidentally, by the Biden camp and staff.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I don’t buy it. Okay. So, you’re in politics. You’re the district attorney of San Francisco, you’re the Attorney General of California, you’re the United States Senator, you’re the Vice President of the United States. You get an uncontested nomination.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. Fair enough.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I don’t feel sorry for you. I don’t feel sorry for you. I’m sorry.
BILL KRISTOL:
You’re tougher minded than some of those 350,000 people, I guess. I don’t know.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Of things I feel about Vice President Harris, pity is not one.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. Republican side, anything strikes you? I worked for a vice president. What do you think of—
JAMES CARVILLE:
J Vance, JD Vance, JD Vance. He’s consolidating everything.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I just don’t see… He’s ingratiating himself to all of these internal groups. He’s a person of some, it’s not my cup of tea, but he’s obviously a person of considerable ambition and talent. He’s plotting his course. I don’t see anybody that’s going to be able to, unless Trump would’ve blow up at him or something like that would happen, I don’t know. But I don’t see, it’s really hard to see somebody, him not being a nominee in 2028.
BILL KRISTOL:
Interesting. Interesting. Final question. I mean, you’re American, even more than you’re a Democrat and a patriot. What do you think? How bad shape are we in, if I can just honestly ask you? In terms of the country as a whole, and even if things go decently politically, the recovery from this, what the situation we’re now in it will be in for the next three years to some degree. How alarmed are you? How hopeful?
BILL KRISTOL:
Bill, I think, “Oh, you’re just being a Pollyanna, James.” I think the talent of the people that’ll be running in 2028, and we don’t have… Our alliances are shot. I think the real danger the United States has is the rest of the world is starting to figure out how to live without us. They just figured, Western Europe, “We can live without the United States. These trading blocks, if we don’t have open sea lanes with the United States, and we don’t have the dollar, we’re not pegged to their bond market.” And my great fear is the world just does a work around. [Inaudible] can’t rely on you anymore. And people, or creative people, will think of something else.
I think we can get some of this back by 2028. But the idea that we were, and my great fear is the rest of the world’s going to figure out, “Well, they’re not really the indispensable nation.” “We’re Germans, we can have our own tanks,” “And we’re Swedes, we actually have as good airplanes as they do.” The Japanese are like, “Shit, we’ve tried to be your friend for forever, and what do we get?” And so that’s my great fear. The Australians said, “Okay, well we’ll trade with China.” I mean, at some point people do a workaround, and that’s my great fear.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, that’s so interesting.
JAMES CARVILLE:
I don’t think people want to do that.
BILL KRISTOL:
No, they’re bending over backwards not to do it, I would say. They’ve had plenty of excuses to do it, and they’re kind of trying not to, but three more years of this, you do worry.
JAMES CARVILLE:
And they’re trying to flatter him and they’re trying to bring him gifts. But my great fear is that everybody says, “Shit, they’re too much trouble. We’ll figure something else out.” And they might.
BILL KRISTOL:
And the trouble with that is history suggests that that’s not stable when they try to do that. I mean, this is the trouble. If they could figure it out, people could say, “Okay, fine, we’ll be less important than we were for the last 100 years.”
JAMES CARVILLE:
An example before we go. I’m in Western Europe, in Prague. And to hear people talk about, it was like we were like adults then living under communism and with the difference it made. It was pretty remarkable. And the guy started, it was a guy, but people rail about the EU and the regulations and this. You know what’s expensive? European land wash. We haven’t had one. It might be cumbersome, it might have too many regulations, but you know what’s really expensive? European land wash. But certainly we can be more optimistic about that. We have a lot of allies in Southeast Asia. I just hope we don’t lose all of them. South Korea’s a major country. Japan, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, New Zealand. I mean, I like our team better than their team, but we’re not getting them in the huddle.
BILL KRISTOL:
And at home, I feel like, I don’t know, I’m slightly weirdly optimistic about young people, but I don’t know why exactly, except I know some…
JAMES CARVILLE:
I’m kind of where you are, and I don’t know if I have good reason for it. But yeah, I’m kind of where you are. But I hope I’m right, I hope you and I are right.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. Well, our generation produced Trump, so we don’t have much to look down on them. I love it when people our age start dumping on all the young people. It’s really worked out great here with [inaudible ].
JAMES CARVILLE:
Did you ever listen to Scott Galloway’s TED talk on young people?
BILL KRISTOL:
I haven’t, no.
JAMES CARVILLE:
[Inaudible] I always kind of thought he was a little bit of a kind of know-it-all, disliked him, but didn’t have much of an opinion. He did a talk on how our generation has just shafted the younger generation. You know what? He’s got a point. There’s real intergenerational theft in this country. I mean, I think that young people, and it is not just the kind of Mamdani young people, or young people that go to Amherst, Swarthmore. I mean, I think young people are starting to see, “We’re getting the short end of the stick. We can’t buy a house, we can’t afford college anymore.” Any commodity that a young person wants. We’ve pretty successfully priced them out of the market.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, hopefully they…
JAMES CARVILLE:
[inaudible] Education and health being at the center of their lives. When we were 28, you and I, we never worried that we wouldn’t own a house one day. Neither did other people. Now, if you talk to a 28-year-old, they say, “I’ll never have a house. How am I going to pay for that? I’m going to pay the taxes, I’m going to pay the interest rates, I’m going to pay the mortgage. I mean, I just don’t see it happening to me.” “I don’t see myself being able to send a kid to a good school. I can’t see it.” Hard to argue with them.
BILL KRISTOL:
And I guess that kind of frustration makes them susceptible to demagogues, but also hopefully responsive to forward-looking leaders. I mean, this is where we’ve been lucky in the past with Kennedy and Reagan. I wasn’t that young, but still, and Clinton, and I don’t know.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Look, again, I’m thinking about President Bush 41. He didn’t get much credit for it, but let me tell you, man, I was in Germany, and Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, and Austria, and made a lot of difference. You hear people talk about it and what it was like, which was kind of interesting. It’s not a totally negative thing. “Well, to be fair, we had 650 square feet, we had one bathroom on the floor, but we always had something to eat. We were never cold. But this is obviously much better.” And that all happened.
BILL KRISTOL:
And especially, as you say, the European war, the first half of the 20th century, the idea that Hegseth’s nostalgic for the good old days, when it was called the Department of War and we stayed out of stuff in Europe and we had two unbelievably horrible and tragic world wars in Europe. And incidentally also in Asia. So it’s like across the board we managed… That was really great when things were the Department of War. That first half of the 20th century was just really wonderful for the world. And we got dragged into those wars incidentally, and lost hundreds of thousands of people. So… ugh.
JAMES CARVILLE:
My high point of the trip, I have to tell you, when I was in Vienna, I went to the Museum of Military History, and actually saw the car that Franz Ferdinand that basically the whole world up, the cars, actually I saw it. I’ve touched it.
BILL KRISTOL:
Congratulations. I hope it’s not relevant. I hope it remains a relic of the past, not a harbinger of the future.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Which is funny, they don’t shine it up anything. It looks like they just drove it from Sarajevo to Vienna and put it on display. The tires are still kind of money.
BILL KRISTOL:
James, I’ll let you get back to what you’re doing over there. Thanks so much. This has been really interesting on so many levels. So thanks a lot for joining me again.
JAMES CARVILLE:
Thank you. Thank you.
BILL KRISTOL:
And thank you all for joining us on Conversations.
