James Carville says Democrats need to stop letting Bernie Sanders and AOC define the party

Carville claimed that Democrats have candidates who are "staggeringly more talented" than Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and it's time to start getting these alternative candidates in front of voters.

The 80-year-old Democratic strategist emphasized the party's deep talent pool that they should be showcasing to help redefine its identity.

"There's truly depth and talent in the Democratic Party and the faster that we can get them on the field and people seeing them, and the sooner we can get people like Bernie Sanders and AOC not defining who the party is, the better off we're going to be," Carville argued.

"If AOC wants to run for president or wants to put her name on the ballot, let her come. Bernie Sanders, run twice and lost two times. Maybe he wants to take a crack a third time. I have no problem with that," Carville said, adding, "But be sure we get, who, in my opinion, are staggeringly more acceptable, staggeringly more talented, staggeringly more articulate candidates out there."

"A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females," Carville said in an interview with a New York Times columnist on self-defeating messaging that he claimed was prevalent in his party. "'Don't drink beer. Don't watch football. Don't eat hamburgers. This is not good for you.'"

He continued: "The message is too feminine: 'Everything you're doing is destroying the planet. You've got to eat your peas.'"

"Maybe he should start a podcast about it," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a post on X. "I hear men are really underrepresented in that space." 

Fox News' Gabriel Hays and Jeffrey Clark contributed to this report.