James Carville made a name for himself almost 30 years ago helping Bill Clinton get elected president.

Now, Carville is something of a Democratic sage, constantly offering advice and opinion on cable news shows. Most recently, he said Dems didn’t do well on Nov. 2 because of a crazy “woke” culture.

The New Jersey connection to this is a report Carville dined recently with Phil Murphy in New Orleans – reports the governor confirmed today.

Does Murphy want to run for president?

The governor was asked that directly, but ignored the question.

But Murphy did say he’s known Carville for a while and that he was “just getting a sense of how he sees things.”

The governor added that he wanted to pick his brain and that Carville is “one of the smartest and I might add funniest” people he knows.

He wasn’t more specific than that, so he didn’t share Carville’s take – if he had one – on the governor’s close call on Nov. 2. Was the Murphy administration too woke? Carville’s views were a mystery.

Murphy’s national reach is expanding, or at least staying the same. He plans to serve a second term as head of the Democratic Governors Association. He also is serving as vice chair of the National Governors Association.

This is relevant when you consider that it was during his second term that Chris Christie’s outside activities frequently took him out of New Jersey, raising the suspicion he had lost interest in the Garden State.

That’s not going to happen to Murphy, or so he said.

“My nose is pressed against the News Jersey glass,” he said.