Like a hardy perennial, longtime Democrat strategist James Carville popped up on fellow lefty Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast Sunday to do what he always does during campaign season: sneer at the Republican Party while warning that his fellow Democrats had better “wake the f*** up.”

The discussion was very interesting at times. It was also weird and wildly profane. Indeed, get Carville liquored-up and going, and every third word will be an F-bomb.

The two of them began by considering the condition and the future of the Democrat Party, whose standard-bearer is the international embarrassment named Joe Biden. When Maher asked whether there were talented Democrats somewhere out there, Carville listed Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and Kentucky Governor Andy Bashear. And we will say this: Any Democrat who can win the governor’s mansion in a red state like Kentucky is worth taking seriously.

Asked if there were any women among this group of ostensibly talented Democrats, Carville said, unhesitatingly, “Whitmer, with Gina Romalto,” referring to second-term Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who’s a sneering, unlikable hack, and former Rhode Island Governor and current Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, who doesn’t seem to be anywhere near ready for prime time. This told us that either Carville is slipping or that the Democrats’ bench is as weak as we suspected.

Things started to get interesting around a half-hour into the conversation. “Insane people are charismatic,” Maher said of Donald Trump, who at least got it half right. He then said, “He plays on the fact that his people think that your people hate them and look down on them and see them as deplorables.”

“Y'know,” conceded Carville, “there’s some truth to that.”

To which Maher replied, “Oh, there’s a lot of truth to it.”

Carville, who by this time was comfortably into a bourbon and dropping F-bombs left and right, showed that the truth serum was starting to take hold: “There is a certain coastal arrogance in this country, and people feel it. All right? They just do. And you can’t tell me that it doesn’t exist, because I know that it does.”

Maher agreed: “I feel it. I feel it all the time. Yes. There is. Yeah, it’s what we were saying before about people [having] to be able to talk to each other even if you don’t completely agree. The other person is not a deplorable. I get it.”

Then Carville: “I find the Left to be just annoying. They’re more than just not important; they’re just annoying. And the Western far-Left is habitually the most stupid, naïve people you can imagine. They come up with these really goofy constructs, and it’s all about feeling, feeling good about yourself.”

“Yeah, well, just feeling,” replied Maher. “As opposed to, like, free speech. If your feelings are hurt, that’s more important than free speech.” Maher, to his credit, is something of a free-speech absolutist.

Talk then moved to every Democrat’s obsession: race, racism, and racists. Maher observed what he called “a point of progress,” namely, that we don’t see people who are “very overtly racist” anymore. “Come on, they’re everywhere,” replied Carville. “Are you kidding me?”

Carville suggested that when someone says “I like what Trump is saying,” it’s a tell for racism. Which is rubbish, of course, but it shows just how confounded he is by Trump’s appeal, or by the appeal of any politician who’s suspicious of Big Government.

“There are plenty of people who like Trump who are not racist,” Maher scolded, and Carville backtracked, wincing and squirming like he does when he’s been caught. “Let me put it this way: Not all Trump people are racists, but all racists are Trump people.”

“That’s true,” said Maher, wrongly but matter-of-factly, before observing, “He’s doing better with minorities.”

This really made Carville uncomfortable — the idea that Trump and the Republicans are making inroads with such a key component of the Democrat electorate. He began to blither: “Because they … we, because, y-you’re, think about it. You’re a black guy. You work at a car repair shop in Gulfport, Mississippi. And, you know, you like to smoke weed, to bash a woman, watch the football game, scratch your a**, and you got all these preachy people telling you what you should do, and people don’t like preachy people, they don’t want to be told that they’re immoral or, you know, the fact that you like to smoke dope or watch immoral football games.”

Wow. Who knew football was immoral? And what a condescending comment about black men and about the fairy-tale Republican scolds who don’t have anything better to do than judge them.

They continued on, comforting each other that Trump is “a nut” and that they could’ve nailed him on the Russia stuff if only Bob Mueller wasn’t “past his prime” and “too by-the-book.” Uh-huh.

But then talk turned to the 2024 election, and they acknowledged the abject weakness of their guy and the likelihood that he could very well lose to Trump. Trump, said Carville, would be “a betting favorite” if the election were held right now.

“He will lose,” said Maher of Biden, “because at some point perception becomes reality. He cannot run for president. He’ll look bad in the debates.”

Looking bad in the debates is the least of Joe Biden’s concerns, but yeah, he’ll look bad in the debates.

“He will be Ruth Bader Biden — it’s not a good look,” Maher said.

Carville then came back to the hard-Left, arguing that white leftists had hijacked the term “woke” and had given the Republicans a tool with which to drive voters away. “What happened,” Carville said, “is overeducated, coastal white people, got a hold of the word and [like] they do with everything else, they completely f***ed it up and pissed everybody in the country off.”

And then this gem: “If we could just get the humanities faculty at Amherst [College] to shut the f*** up, we’d be a lot better off.”

We’ll end it there, on a note of agreement.