Funny how the same people who spent the last decade screaming “vote blue no matter who” suddenly found a door they want to lock. James Carville, the Ragin’ Cajun who hasn’t had a fresh idea since the first Bush administration, went on NewsNation this week to announce that Darializa Avila Chevalier, who just beat a sitting congressman in a New York primary, should be frozen out of the Democratic caucus entirely.
“They should not seat her in the caucus,” Carville said. “Her views are totally against anything that Democrats have.”
SWinxy (CC BY 4.0) via Wikimedia CommonsAsk yourself who benefits when a party starts eating its own on live television. Not the voters. Not the little guy. The consultants benefit. The cable bookers benefit. The establishment benefits, because nothing consolidates power like a good purge.
Avila Chevalier is a former staffer for New York’s socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani. She took out Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in a primary. She was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, helped found Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and was part of a campus group that reportedly called for “Death to America.” In deleted social media posts she backed abolishing police and prisons. She opposes all deportations, including of criminals.
You can love her or hate her. But she won. The voters in that district picked her. And here comes Carville, the self-described “washed-up, old consultant,” telling the party to