Democratic strategist James Carville lays out why he thinks Democrats lost in 2024 and his plans for the future of the party
Democratic strategist James Carville broke down why he thought Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election with CNN host Michael Smerconish on Saturday.
Smerconish referenced a reader’s comment reacting to Carville’s New York Times op-ed from Thursday, “This is from The New York Times: ‘Character, honesty, decency, intelligence, democracy. None of these seem to matter in our country when electing a president.’ I think that pretty much says it all. You would say what to that person?”
Carville replied, “Well, first of all, I totally agree with that person,” adding, “Michael, there‘s the simple, basic rule of politics is voters want an election about them. They don’t want an election about you or your opponent. And for too much, we lost that. I lost it myself. We made it about Trump and we didn‘t make it about voters.”
Carville was predicting a Harris win before the election, even writing a separate op-ed for the Times headlined, “Three Reasons I’m Certain Kamala Harris Will Win.”
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Democratic strategist James Carville told CNN host Michael Smerconish that Democrats focused too much on attacking Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. (Screenshot/CNN)
While talking about Democrats prioritizing attacking President-elect Donald Trump over the concerns of voters, Carville asked himself, “How could I, at 80 years old, been doing this for 50 years, lapse into that level of stupidity?”
The longtime Democratic strategist was also critical of his party’s understanding of how people receive their information, stating, “Now what I am going to educate myself on is how people receive information. I don’t think Democrats fully appreciate that.”
Carville noted the Republican Party’s utilization of alternative media, stating “I think they‘re much better at like what we would call alternative media, but I‘m not sure alternative media is not the main place that people get information now,” adding, “I want to know where these people are getting this goofy information from. And there‘s so much misinformation and you just can‘t correct it all.”
He also went on to blame voters’ anxieties around the Biden administration’s handling of inflation and the southern border on misinformation, claiming, “People thought we had disorder at the border. People thought it was disorder in pricing and inflation. People thought incorrectly. I would argue that that was crime.”
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Carville believes that rampant misinformation from alternative media helped the Republicans win on issues such as the crisis at the southern border and inflation. (Aspen Institute YouTube channel)
He also claimed that Republicans took the crisis at the southern border and “framed it as an economic issue. These people are coming to take your jobs. They‘re actually doing no such thing.”
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As for the future, Carville presented three issues that the Democratic Party should focus on for the next election, “Let‘s try codifying Roe v Wade, that has two-thirds support. It‘s all across the Democratic Party. They can‘t do it. Let‘s talk about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That unifies the Democratic Party. That has over two-thirds support. Do that. Let‘s talk about taxes over 400,000. Don‘t let those tax cuts expire. Take that money and put it into a first-time homebuyers relief fund or rental relief fund. They can‘t do that.”
