Remarks by Sen. John Fetterman calling out longtime Democratic strategist James Carville this week are a sign "systemic" issues within the Democratic Party – and the unbending nature of its leadership – could be the impetus for change at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a conservative show host and media contributor says. Pennsylvania, oddly, could be ground zero for that change.
President Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes in 2020. Now Democrats in The Keystone State are switching to the Republican Party in droves. Fox News reports that 35,589 Democratic voters have changed affiliations in 2023 alone. This is not a new trend. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that thousands had already begun to make the switch in the middle of 2022.
"I remain very pessimistic about our chances to galvanize key voters, young voters. I can't understand why we're not responding to this five-alarm fire," Carville told CNN in October.
Fetterman goes on attack against Carville
Fetterman, the eccentric Pennsylvania Democrat known for his slovenly dress, came down hard on Carville.
"I'll use this as another opportunity to tell James Carville to shut [expletive deleted] up. My man hasn't been relevant since grunge was a thing, and I don't know why he believes it's helpful to say these kinds of things about an incredibly difficult circumstance with an incredibly strong and decent and excellent president. I'll never understand that," the senator told Politico.
Stacy Washington, a former American Family Radio host and current SiriusXM show host, told Fox News that it's not Carville who's out of touch here.
"To quote Fetterman, there's an 'incredibly difficult circumstance' going on with voters in Pennsylvania. It's a huge state that Democrats need to lock up in order to secure 2024 for Biden," Washington pointed out. "What we're looking at with over 30,000 of those Democrats switching their registration to 'R' … means they have trouble there.
"James Carville may have been around when grunge was a thing, but he's still relevant now because he's sounding alarms for the Democrats on their policies that are failing Americans."
Energy policies in particular will be a thorn for Democrats, Washington said.
"… Their horrible energy policy … [is refusing] to allow us to drill on American land, refusing to allow us to be net energy producers, refusing to look at the median income for a household of four which has dropped after rising consistently for four years in a row under President Trump. If you look at every single metric, whether it's the cost of chicken thighs at the grocery store, the cost of energy at home to heat your home, or the cost of energy at the pump, numbers are trending in the wrong directions for Democrats."
Regardless of the numbers, however, Democrats remain committed to unpopular ideas.
Biden won't pivot
Meanwhile, the Republican-led House of Representatives has moved ahead with its impeachment inquiry into Biden. But as Washington pointed out, it's a very different Democratic administration than in the late 1990s when Bill Clinton was impeached.
"President Biden doesn't have a propensity for changing his policy directions as Bill Clinton did. If you think back to the Bill Clinton years, after he was impeached, he really ran for the fences and tried to make changes on policy that would impact Americans and shore up his legacy as a great president," she said.
That flexibility allowed Clinton to work with GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich to create a centrist approach to reforms for Social Security and Medicare.
"He was able to usher in, with the help of Newt Gingrich, an amazing economic boon that really salvaged his presidency. Biden doesn't appear to have that ability to pivot and make changes in order to benefit Americans. That's why voters are looking more seriously at the frontrunner on the American side, which is [former] President Trump," Washington said. (See related article)
There's a growing chance that Pennsylvania votes Republican in 2024, according to Washington.
"Regardless of who the GOP actually nominates or who goes up against Biden in the fall, the issues facing the Democrats are systemic," she stated. "And the panic is real because they know these are things they've advocated for and their activist base won't allow them to withdraw from [them]."
