Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville took on Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) for making her campaign for U.S. Senate “a lot more about herself” than about voters.
“First of all, it seems like she’s well-educated. It seems like she’s — got a lot of energy. But she, to me, she violates the first rule of politics and that is in politics, you always make it about the voters and never about yourself,” said Carville, in remarks on his “Politics War Room” podcast with Al Hunt.
On Monday, Crockett announced her bid to unseat Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in next year’s election, a move that took place 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 where she stares in silence and eventually cracks a smile as audio of the president’s insults toward her plays throughout.
Crockett has stressed that internal campaign polling showed she could win, a message she reportedly shared over the phone last week with Allred and Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D), the latter of whom remains in the race.
Crockett’s campaign has yet to share the polling results as of Friday evening. Public polling on the congresswoman has varied, with one poll indicating that 40% of Texas voters held an unfavorable view of her and another showing her leading Talarico among voters in March’s Democratic primary.
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As Crockett looks to end Republicans’ 30-plus-year streak of winning statewide elections in Texas, Carville said he’d like the congresswoman a lot more if she helped Democrats campaign in districts where Republicans have a slim 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 of the TV shows. You can get in as long as you’re polemic, but you’re not helping very much,” he said.
He stressed that the Democratic Party knows “what wins elections.”
“What wins elections is not sitting there talking incessantly about yourself,” Carville said.
“Winning elections is not about how many clicks you get or how much overnight fundraising you do. Winning elections is being part of framing issues and understanding where people come from and I don’t think Congresswoman Crockett is very good at that, I’ll be very frank.”
