CNN’s Bakari Sellers Slams Democratic Election Post-Mortem From ‘Manic’ James Carville And ‘Disappointing’ Pod Save America Hosts

CNN commentator Bakari Sellers slammed the post-election soul-searching from veteran Democratic strategist James Carville and the ex-Obama aides who comprise Pod Save America after the party’s election loss, urging fellow liberals to “take a moment of self-reflection.”

In a Politicon video released  on Tuesday, Carville knocked Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign for mistakes that included not allowing Harris to pick “her own people” and the campaign being too guided by “identity politics” – which he called a “huge fucking error.” He also took aim at “snot-nosed” younger “progressive” Democrats for pushback against a potential Harris appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

Meanwhile, the same day, Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer was joined by Jen O’Malley Dillon, David Plouffe, Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter from Harris’s campaign to analyze what went wrong.

Appearing on CNN Wednesday, Sellers sniped at both Carville and the Pod Save America crew for missing the mark.

After rolling back the clip of Carville, host Kate Bolduan asked Sellers what he thought of Carville’s take. Sellers said the Democratic strategist was not “in the mainstream” and dismissed his “manic outbursts.”

I’m not sure that [Carville is] in the mainstream. I’m not sure the last time that he actually talked to voters who were in a barbershop or in a college dorm room. Or the last time that he had a town hall meeting or visited a town hall meeting, or pressed the flesh or kissed the baby.

I love the fact that people go to James Carville so that they can have outbursts like that. He’s the Dan Hurley of Democratic politics where you just have these kinds of manic outbursts day in and day out.

The Joe Rogan debate is old. If she would have gone on Joe Rogan, she still would have lost this race. Trump didn’t win this race because he went on Joe Rogan. It’s hard to win a race when 75 percent of voters say they were better off four years ago than they are today.

Sellers then criticized the Pod Save America hosts over their “lack of self-awareness” in their post-election analysis.

We had this podcast yesterday on Pod Save America where all of the campaign staffers decided to call up and go to Pod Save America. It was disappointing at best, hearing their lack of self-awareness, their lack of self-reflection. The inability to figure out a way in which you could win this race simply providing messaging and saying that we’re up whereby you don’t believe that in your heart of hearts to be true.

He continued to suggest that the podcasters had failed to deliver value for Harris.

I just think it was disappointing. And Pod Save America themselves have been relatively disappointing because they were supposed to be our ecosystem to compete with the right-wing Ben Shapiros. We were supposed to have this information chamber that was Pod Save, but instead they’ve kind of become this cocoon themselves, where challenging them becomes a hissy-fit back and forth and their messaging has not been one that’s been able to prove successful with those same voters that we’re talking about that Donald Trump did well with.

So I think everybody needs to take a moment of self-reflection, including myself, to figure out how we can get better for 2025. People are talking about 2028. If we get smacked in 2025, in New Jersey and Virginia, then you blow it up. But until then, people just need to stop wanting to hear themselves talk.

Watch above on CNN.