James Carville is done biting his tongue. The longtime Democratic strategist, who helped elect Bill Clinton and has remained one of the party’s most candid voices, dropped a blunt message to the far-left this week: maybe it’s time for you to go your own way.

In a video released Tuesday by Politicon, Carville floated the idea of a formal split between traditional Democrats and the self-described “progressive” wing that’s increasingly dominating the conversation—but not necessarily winning elections. His tone wasn’t angry. If anything, it was weary. “Let’s make a clean break,” he suggested. “And please, just don’t call yourselves Democrats.”

Carville’s remarks reflect a growing sentiment among party veterans and moderate voters alike who are fed up with what he calls the “faculty lounge and identity left.” While he agreed with some of their policy aims, he slammed the constant obsession with “pronoun politics,” saying it’s actively repelling voters in the swing districts Democrats need to win.

“If this election didn’t teach you how damaging that is, I don’t think there’s anything I can tell you,” Carville said, warning that the progressive left’s fixation on symbolic culture battles is toxic to the broader Democratic brand.

He’s not alone in sounding the alarm. A Gallup poll in February found that 45% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want the party to move toward the center. That frustration has only deepened after 2024’s underwhelming results, where swing-state candidates like Ruben Gallego in Arizona and Elissa Slotkin in Michigan reportedly had to overcome their own party label just to stay competitive.

Carville recalled how in past decades the Democratic Party somehow held together wildly different factions—from segregationists in the South to urban progressives. But now, he says, the strain isn’t worth it.

“Maybe it’s just not worth it anymore,” he said. “Maybe what you’re proposing—stupid buttons with jackass pronouns on them—is something that no one in the country really wants. It turns people off and costs us votes.”

This isn’t just about aesthetics or slogans. Carville believes the far-left is waging war within the party rather than taking on Republicans. “They never run against a Republican,” he observed. “All they do is run against other Democrats.”

And he has a point. From primary challenges targeting incumbents deemed insufficiently progressive, to online campaigns shaming moderate Dems over perceived ideological sins, much of the far-left’s energy seems directed inward. That’s a luxury the party can’t afford if it wants to remain competitive in 2026 and beyond.

Carville’s message to the hard-left wasn’t just critical—it was also oddly gracious. He invited them to form their own movement, campaign under their own name, and then come back to the negotiating table after the election, much like coalition governments do in other countries. “After the election, we can sit down and say, ‘We want to be part of a governing majority. Here are our terms,’” he said.

But that assumes two things: that the progressive wing can win enough seats to have bargaining power, and that they’re willing to break away in the first place. Both are big ifs. So far, many of the loudest progressive voices prefer to stay inside the Democratic tent, shaping the agenda through pressure campaigns, media leverage, and control over activist networks. That has proven effective at driving the party left—but not necessarily toward victory.

Carville’s latest comments build on similar critiques he’s made in recent weeks. During a Thursday podcast, he declared the party is moving away from selecting candidates based on identity politics. “No one gives a [expletive] anymore in the Democratic Party what gender you are, what race you are, what ethnicity you are,” he said. “They just want to win.”

And during an April 3 conversation, he revealed that even top-performing Democrats in tough states feel burdened by the party brand. “The hardest thing they had to overcome was a ‘D’ after their name,” he said of Gallego and Slotkin.

It’s clear that Carville sees a crisis coming—and he’s calling it out now before it gets worse. His warning to the party is simple: abandon the ideological purity tests, drop the divisive virtue signaling, and return to building a broad coalition that can win elections and govern effectively.

Otherwise, the Democrats may become a party of competing splinters, too fractured to stop a Republican juggernaut—and too self-absorbed to even notice.