James Carville says Jasmine Crockett is violating the
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville criticized Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) for making her U.S. Senate campaign “much more about herself” than about voters.
“First of all, she seems like she’s well educated. She seems like she has a lot of energy. But to me, she violates the first rule of politics and that is that politics is always about the voters and never about yourself,” Carville said, in comments on his podcast “Politics War Room” with Al Hunt.
On Monday, Crockett announced his attempt to unseat Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in next year’s election, a move that came just hours after Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) dropped out of the race to run in a newly drawn House district.
The congresswoman, a frequent critic of Donald Trump, accompanied the announcement with a 45-second clip in which she watches in silence and finally cracks a smile while audio of the president’s insults toward her plays.
Crockett has emphasized that the campaign’s internal polling showed she could win, a message she reportedly shared by phone last week with Allred and Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D), the latter of whom remains in the race.
Crockett’s campaign had not yet shared poll results as of Friday evening. Public polls on the congresswoman have varied: One survey indicated that 40% of Texas voters had an unfavorable opinion of her and another showed her leading Talarico among voters in the March Democratic primary.
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As Crockett seeks to end Republicans’ more than 30-year winning streak in state elections in Texas, Carville said he would like the congresswoman much more if she helped Democrats campaign in districts where Republicans have a slight advantage.
“You can stay in Congress as long as you want, you can get all the hits, you can get all the clicks, you can get on all the TV shows. You can get in as long as you’re controversial, but you’re not helping much,” he said.
He stressed that the Democratic Party knows “what wins the elections.”
“What wins elections is not sitting around talking incessantly about yourself,” Carville said.
“Winning elections is not about how many clicks you get or how much fundraising you do overnight. Winning elections is about being a part of framing the issues and understanding where people are coming from and I don’t think Congresswoman Crockett is very good at that, I’ll be very blunt.”