James Carville says Bernie Sanders will soon face 'backlash,' calls for him to exit race
Raw video: Former Bill Clinton campaign manager James Carville says Democrats are more interested in getting Donald Trump out of office than a Bernie Sanders 'revolution' during appearance on MSNBC.
Democratic strategist James Carville said on Tuesday that while Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., should receive recognition for his political accomplishments, Democrats should move on and embrace former Vice President Joe Biden.
"We got to acknowledge that he created a movement -- that he did some truly remarkable things in American politics ... but we also, we can't dis these Democratic voters who are just coming out in every corner of this country, saying let's get on with this thing. Now, our mission as a party is to defeat Donald Trump," Carville told MSNBC. He added that the odds were overwhelmingly in Biden's favor.
"Let's shut this puppy down and let's move on and worry about November. This thing is decided. There's no reason to keep it going, not even a day longer," he said.
Carville's comments came as Biden racked up multiple victories on Tuesday, adding Missouri, Michigan, Idaho, and Mississippi to the states where Democratic voters approved his bid for the party's nomination.
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Sanders initially beat Biden in several early primary contests but fell significantly behind on Super Tuesday, when -- fresh off his overwhelming victory in South Carolina -- Biden won the majority of states holding contests that day.
Biden currently has 847 delegates compared to Sanders' 685, and is expected to grab the Democratic nomination. While 2,282 delegates remain up for grabs, polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight predicts he has a 99 percent chance of taking the nomination.
Despite his increasingly grim chances of winning the 2020 race, Sanders said on Wednesday that he plans to press on.
Biden's victories followed an ongoing intraparty debate over whether Democrats should choose a more progressive nominee to challenge Trump in 2020. Democrats like Carville worried that Sanders would doom the party's political prospects by pushing certain policies.
According to Carville, both Sanders and Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., were pushing "stupid" ideas about higher education.
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"Democrats talking about free college tuition or debt forgiveness. I’m not here to debate the idea. What I can tell you is that people all over this country worked their way through school, sent their kids to school, paid off student loans. They don’t want to hear this s--t," he previously said.
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Carville also took a shot at Sanders for saying that he wanted to expand voting rights for people like the Boston bomber. Sanders, the well-known Democratic strategist suggested, would be ineffective as president and wasn't representative of the Democratic Party.
Instead, Carville said, he is an "ideologue."
"There’s no chance in hell we’ll ever win the Senate with Sanders at the top of the party defining it for the public," Carville previously said. "So long as [Mitch] McConnell runs the Senate, it’s game over. There’s no chance we’ll change the courts and nothing will happen, and he’ll just be sitting up there screaming in the microphone about the revolution."
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