Democratic swami James Carville has taken the drastic step of telling major party donors to stop contributing to politicians who still support President Biden after last week’s poor debate performance.
Carville — the veteran strategist behind Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 White House run — cited Biden’s tanking poll numbers in a conference call with dozens of wealthy Dem contributors earlier this week, according to Semafor.
“Seventy-two percent of people want something different — why not give it to them?’’ Carville reportedly said on the call.
When one of the deep-pocketed contributors piped up to ask, “What can we as donors do to encourage the change in the ticket?,” the 79-year-old “Ragin’ Cajun” had a ready response.
“What I would say is, ‘If we don’t do something about this, I’m going to put you on call block on my cell phone,’” he said, according to the outlet.
The donors spent an hour debating Biden’s precarious future with Carville, as well as fellow former Clinton strategist Paul Begala and Dmitri Mehlhorn, a top adviser to billionaire LinkedIn founder and major Dem donor Reid Hoffman.
“If you wake Joe Biden at 3:00 in the morning and ask him who’s president, does he get it right?” a donor worried out loud.
Another contributor said: “Continuing to have President Biden at the top of this ticket is giving people an excuse to vote for Donald Trump.’’
But Mehlhorn, referring to the likeliest candidate to replace Biden, responded that Vice President Kamala Harris “is more threatening to those swing voters than a dead Joe Biden or a comatose Joe Biden.”
“So if Joe has to go, it’s gonna be Kamala,” he summed up, “and if it’s Kamala, it’s gonna be harder.”
Still, Carville was insistent with the donors, who contribute to the Democratic Super PAC American Bridge, which provides the bulk of the party’s opposition research and ads targeting Trump.
“Maybe we look back on this thing and say, ‘This is the best thing that ever happened to us,’ ” he told the wealthy contributors, some of whom were calling in from vacation.
“If this would have happened to us on Oct. 5, we’d be more than bruised, screwed and tattooed,’’ Carville said. “Maybe this will set it into motion something different.”
The longtime strategist has not been shy about his dismal views on Biden’s candidacy.
He has already predicted the president will drop out of the race, and in return, got kicked by Biden’s campaign, which blasted out a fundraising text message invoking Carville’s name without his sign-off.
