Winning Is Everything, Stupid’ Review

You take a major risk while trying to be as topical as possible when you make a documentary about a contemporary issue: The situation you originally set out to examine can change in heartbeat — too late for you to do much more than make a passing reference to that change in your movie’s final moments. Meanwhile, the audience already knows about that development before sitting down to watch what you’ve constructed.

Consider the case of “Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid,” a revealing and fascinating documentary portrait of James Carville, the Louisiana-born Democratic political operative whose uninhibited self-assurance, aggressive proselytizing and profanely funny pronouncements have earned him the nickname of “The Raging Cajun.”

For much of his film’s running time, director Matt Tyrnauer observes Carville as he follows with ever-increasing anxiety the 2024 Presidential race, fearing the worst as early polls indicate incumbent Joe Biden will be thumped by ex-President Donald Trump. Even before most people in and out of his party started to suggest, politely or otherwise, that Biden should bow out of the race, Carville began to entertain his own doubts about whether the incumbent really was too old and cognitively diminished to handle the mental and physical demands of a second term. 

And then in May 2024, a bombshell ABC/Washington Post poll showed that only 42% of likely voters supported Biden’s re-election — and 49% favored Trump. “That poll,” Carville admits with his distinctive blunt-spokenness, “it knocked me right off my fucking horse.” Before long, the maverick operative started pushing for implementation of a Plan B: Biden should quit the contest without choosing a worthy successor, and request that a new candidate be chosen at a wide-open Democratic National Convention.

Of course, that’s not quite how things worked out. (Kamala Harris fleetingly appears just before the closing credits, in footage obviously tacked on not long before the movie’s late-August premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.) It’s a testament to how compelling — and yes, how flat-out entertaining — the film is up to the point of this jarring “plot twist” that Tyrnauer is able to tell a story that feels dramatically satisfying, albeit not totally complete.

It helps a lot that “Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid” intersperses scenes depicting the high drama of the 2024 presidential race with the relentless evolution of Carville from political neophyte to indefatigable kingmaker.

He managed the first major elevation of his national profile by being chief campaign advisor to Bill Clinton in the former Arkansas governor’s successful 1992 presidential run. George Stephanopoulos, who came on board early as Carville’s assistant, notes that the candidate and the advisor “both had a little rogue in them,” which likely served both men well whenever Carville had to play defense as some of Clinton’s skeletons (especially extramarital shenanigans and accusations of draft-dodging) were uncloseted.

Carville plotted masterfully to draw attention away from these and other scandals during the game-changing campaign by emphasizing Clinton’s potential as a better problem-solver than incumbent George H.W. Bush. In this vein, Carville coined a mantra that would inspire his staff — “It’s the economy, stupid!” — and become the early ’90s equivalent of a viral meme.

(Tyrnauer slyly uses snippets from “The War Room,” Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s excellent 1993 documentary about behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Carville, Stephanopoulos and others in the Clinton camp — including Carville’s now-ironic accusations that Bush was simply too old to be an effective commander-in-chief.)

Also emphasized throughout the documentary: Carville’s improbable relationship with Republican operative Mary Matalin, whom he met during the Clinton-Bush race. They’ve been married now for over three decades — something that amazes most pundits, which in turn amuses the seemingly mismatched couple. It’s obvious that despite their considerable differences — he railed against the Gulf War while Matalin, during her stint as a White House staffer under President George W. Bush, supported the invasion — they genuinely love and respect each other. Indeed, their unbreakable bond seems to be a relic from an earlier age when political disputes were not enough to keep people from being, at the very least, civil in their interactions.

“Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid” suggests Carville himself recognizes that his approach to political warfare, party loyalty and campaign rhetoric may define him as a relic to many in his field — including many fellow Democrats. He speaks disparagingly about the “woke silliness” of intransigent progressives that might push moderate Democrats and even diehard liberals into the Republican Party. But if Biden supporters may still hold a grudge against him for vociferously backing plans to supplant the incumbent, well, he frankly doesn’t care. For him, winning really is everything. 

As political consultant and commentator Paul Begala says of his longtime friend, Carville “is the smartest son of a bitch who’s ever done this for a living.” Age may have slowed him down a tad, but Carville is still in the game, and he’s still playing for keeps.