Good-bye, James.

It probably won’t matter to anyone but me, but I am breaking with James Carville. Once and for all.

I got tired of the shtik a long time ago. The jambalaya vowels. The athleisure broadcast outfit. The baseball cap that said, “Screw all of you to Hell.” I’m a big fan of performative, down-market exoticism, but there’s a limit to what a man can take.

Apart from that, he was wrong about Hillary. And then, God bless him, he was wrong about Kamala. And then, in the middle, he advised dispirited Democrats to tamp down their buoyancy and retreat into fear. This was an especially cruel little move. In the middle of Kamala’s spectacular campaign, he told us not to be quite so happy. Then he told us she couldn’t help but win. Then she lost to Sauron and Voldemort. Then, weeks later, he conceded his error. I think I’m exhausted by James Carville’s advice, especially when it is so nakedly self-promoting and tinged with the desperation of remaining relevant.

Now he comes with another message. Sit back and let the Republicans destroy themselves. They will, he tells us, in the next thirty days. If not that, at least by Memorial Day. And maybe by Labor Day it will all be over. Otherwise we risk a kind of over-exertion, of tiring ourselves out with constant retaliation. All it does is to alienate voters and drag us into the mud of Republican mudslinging. That’s what led to Kamala’s defeat.

I don’t think that’s what happened at all. Kamala Harris ran a beautiful, high-minded campaign, focusing on Trumpism only at the end. No mudslinging, thank-you. No thrust and parry. In fact, she kept herself from bloody evisceration. Too much so, at least for this partisan Democrat. The electorate delighted in the theater of Trumpism, the ugly jabs, the outlandish buffoonery. For my money, Kamala could have done more of the same.

And when she lost this election, she lost by a hair. The electorate backed away from Biden’s infirmity, and rewarded the candidate who promised lower egg prices, no taxes on tips, and punishing tariffs for everybody and his brother.

But what they really loved was Trump’s charismatic persona, his shows of force, his Teflon invincibility. Even if he fails to govern—even if the Republicans can’t negotiate a budget—his party has figured out how to hold attention, to lift itself into the realm of political mythmaking. Joe Biden was a fantastically good man, but he did not carry himself like a mythic winner. He gave off the vibe of assisted living, of needing a bib at dinner, of spectrum-of-care.

Our job is not to give Republicans an inch, even if they succeed in immolating themselves. Actual people are already deep in suffering, and we need to say that loudly and hold Sauron responsible. We need to muscle up to take on the battles ahead and be ready to die on every hill. The party that leans back gets weaker not stronger. If we wait patiently for our moment, it will never come.