Carville Suggests Democrats Give Up On Florida: Might Be Better Off Looking Harder At Mississippi, Louisiana

Democratic strategist James Carville said Thursday during a visit with MSNBC's Joy Reid that Florida might be a lost cause for the Democratic Party and they might have more luck trying to boost black voter turnout to flip places like Mississippi and Louisiana. <blockquote>JAMES CARVILLE: The Louisiana state [Democratic] Party has had a very difficult time in the last year, I'll leave it at that. You have to understand, Louisiana has about 33% black total population. It's very rare, if we could get the black contribution to 33 (that never happens, or seldom happens) we'd be in a lot better position. A state that interests me a lot is Mississippi which is 37, maybe 38% black, it only votes 30. If you got your staff from 30 to 38, that's a lot of votes. And we don't lose that bad in Mississippi, not that big. It's not as many electoral votes, but we might be better off looking harder at Mississippi than Florida. I don't know that. I'm just throwing a riff off the top of my head. But it's been very frustrating. I think some of our previous consultants you had on, I've been trying to tell some of these big fund-raisers, the massive GOTV, massive voter registrations in the Mississippi delta, the Louisiana delta. Most of the black folks in my part of the world live close to the river, where i grew up was probably 80% black, I grew up right on the river. I think consultants are making some good points, but we've got to be realistic here. If we can just get a good share of the vote up to our share of the population, that would help. We would have probably won in North Carolina. We would have to do the math. </blockquote>