The Left isn’t doing themselves any favors. And it’s all or nothing.
Now a Democrat strategist calls out a critical error that could lose the midterms.
THE PARTY’S OWN ORACLE IS SOUNDING THE ALARM AGAIN
James Carville has been warning his fellow Democrats for years that their love affair with radical progressive sloganeering is a losing proposition. He said it about defunding the police. He said it about equity politics and intersectionality jargon. Now, with the 2026 midterms approaching and the party still searching for a coherent message, Carville and co-host Al Hunt are raising the red flag on the left’s newest gift to the Republican Party: the push to abolish ICE.
The warning came during a recent episode of their podcast, where the two veteran political commentators highlighted Texas congressional candidate Bobby Pulido as a rare example of a Democrat who actually knows how to talk to working people. Pulido had recently gone viral for capturing something the national party has completely lost touch with, saying: “People down here don’t consider themselves poor — they consider themselves broke. When you’re broke, you say, ‘Tomorrow I’m going to make it.’ Democrats treated people like they’re poor, not like they’re broke.”
Carville said he loved the insight — but it was Pulido’s response to the abolish-ICE question that had Hunt most animated.
ABOLISH ICE IS THE NEW DEFUND THE POLICE — AND DEMOCRATS ARE WALKING RIGHT INTO IT
Hunt didn’t mince words. “He basically said, ‘No, we should reform ICE,'” Hunt noted approvingly. “I think that question abolishing ICE is to ‘Defund the police’ of 2026. And Democrats that come into that are giving Republicans an opening. And boy, he didn’t. He really answered that well.”
The parallel is sharp and revealing. “Defund the Police” became one of the most electorally toxic phrases in modern Democratic history — a slogan that handed Republicans a sledgehammer in 2020 and 2022 and gave working-class voters across the country permission to walk away from a party they increasingly felt didn’t speak for them. “Abolish ICE” is shaping up to be its sequel: a performative demand from the activist left that alienates the very voters Democrats need to win, while delivering Republicans a ready-made campaign ad.
The fact that Carville — one of the most shrewd electoral minds the Democratic Party has ever produced — is saying this out loud on his own podcast is a measure of how seriously he takes the threat. He has spent the better part of two years warning that the “idiot progressives,” as he has called them before, are steering the party into another electoral ditch.
THE WISDOM DEMOCRATS KEEP IGNORING — AND THE ‘BLOOMING IDIOTS’ WHO KEEP GETTING AIRTIME
Carville and Hunt also used the episode to praise retiring Democratic elder statesman Barney Frank, now 87 and in hospice care, who has recently spoken out against the far left for having “embraced an agenda that goes beyond what’s politically acceptable.” The message Carville drew from Frank’s career was stripped-down and practical: “Keep the goal in mind, you’re trying to help people. You don’t overreach. You do things that you need to do.”
Carville then pivoted to contrast that wisdom with the progressive fringe, unloading on the Working Families Party with characteristic directness. “Blooming idiots at Working Families Party. Look up these dopes,” he said. “There’s not a single person that identifies with them that lives more than 15 miles away from salt water.” Even in his frustration, Carville was making a geographic point that Republicans have been making for years: the loudest voices shaping Democratic policy live in coastal bubbles that bear no resemblance to the districts the party actually needs to win. Until the party figures that out, the midterms are going to be a lot more competitive than Democrats are currently predicting.
