Editor’s note: As we head into the final weeks of the 2024 election, I’m reprinting a popular Fingers column that originally ran on November 5th, 2020, before we knew the outcome to that race. The piece is about tone-deaf elitism, electoral politics, and expensive liquor. I’ve added some brief discussion of how this pertains to the 2024 race, and I’ve edited lightly edited for tense and formatting throughout. Otherwise I think it held up pretty well.—Dave.
On the night of the 2020 election, with the race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump still too close to call, longtime Democratic operative & pundit James Carville got on MSNBC with an expensive bottle of booze and told the network’s audience of #Resistance liberals to calm down.
“First thing is every Democrat—just put the razor blades and the Ambien back in the medicine cabinet,” the Ragin’ Cajun told anchor Brian Williams with a chuckle. “We’re gonna be fine, we’re gonna be fine.”
Making suicide jokes on national TV at a time when ordinary Americans were stressed the fuck out at the very-plausible prospect that the Democrats might’ve blown it again was one hint that the long-time Clinton acolyte was not actually very attuned to the concerns of working-class voters. The bottle of Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve bourbon peeked out over Carville’s shoulder on the video feed was another.
“That stuff is about $200 an ounce,” he told Williams, who had asked if the bottle started the night full. “I parsed it out pretty good… Uncle Pappy, he’s not coming out until I’m sure, but right now I feel good.”
Of course Carville felt good. None of this would affect him very much, regardless of how it went. After all, he was drinking whiskey that costs more per pour than a month’s worth of insulin.
That a Clintonian Democrat who once wrote a book purporting to understand the political importance of the American middle class would nevertheless get on TV in 2020 to condescend to rank-and-file voters while brandishing this particular pricey bourbon wasn’t surprising. Four years later, unfortunately, it still isn’t.