Former Vice President Joe Biden’s statement that voters who have a hard time choosing between him and President Donald Trump “ain’t black” will not mean “diddly squat” in the 2020 election, Democratic strategist James Carville said in a weekend interview with MSNBC’s Brian Williams.

“James, there’s another element to this that I’ve heard you rant about, and that is the Democratic Party’s propensity for a purity test,” Williams told Carville. “And that’s fine, but too much purity testing can leave no one standing at the end of the day.

“Look, it was kind of a dumb thing to say,” Carville responded. “He said I’m sorry. I said it. This is him. The effects of this are through the weekend, all right? This is not going to be mean diddly squat in the long term.”

Carville added, “You’ve got [Trump] telling people to take Clorox and take a drug that is ill-advised against. It’s not equivalency, but the Democrats, we love to go, ‘Oh, God, Biden is terrible. He messed up.’ What are we going to do? So he said something he shouldn’t have said. It happens all the time in politics. I mean, it’s hardly anything mean about it. It just kind of came out the wrong way. And I hope he doesn’t get so nervous that he doesn’t stay himself at some level.”

Biden stoked controversy after a Friday morning interview with The Breakfast Club‘s Charlamagne tha God in which Biden said, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Carville added that Biden should continue his campaign without second thoughts, saying, “I hope he doesn’t get too shaken by this. He apologized for it right away, which is the correct thing to do. But there’s no equivalency here. You know, all this Democratic handwringing is just silly. I mean, this is not going to amount to anything.”