James Carville Says Harris Campaign Spending Did ‘Almost Unfathomable Damage’ To Dems: ‘Resistance Is Going To Have Trouble Raising Money’
Screenshot via Politicon
Democratic strategist James Carville continued his criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, this time arguing the massive spending will carry massive consequences for the party going forward.
Harris’s campaign reportedly spent $1.5 billion, a number critics have honed in on following her election defeat to President-elect Donald Trump. On the Politics War Room podcast this week, Carville predicted stricter campaign audits and fundraising struggles going forward as the party attempts to explain the costly campaign.
“The resistance is going to have trouble raising money. These fundraisers are burnt,” Carville told co-host Al Hunt. “They’re really pissed now.”
Carville added the “damage” the Democratic “brand” has taken through the 2024 presidential campaign and in the last decade is “almost unfathomable.”
The longtime political strategist ripped further into the campaign’s spending and said he’s heard from people at the Democratic National Committee that there will be much stricter “audits” on campaign spending going forward. Carville said he’s also been asked to run for DNC chair, a position he has no interest in.
He said:
“I have people that are contacting me to run for DNC chair — promise you I’m not going to to get in the middle of that … But I would say the policy, number one, is we’re going to audit everything. We’re going to audit the campaign. We’re going to audit Future Forward. We’re going to audit the DNC so people can know,” he added. “But I’m telling you, without complete transparency, the campaign — we think — raised a billion and a half dollars. Okay, we know that Future Forward, the last we saw, was $900 million, so we can assume that they got to a billion before election. That’s two and a half freaking billion dollars.”
Carville asked where all of this money went and suggested Harris’s campaign was too controlled by lobbyists looking to exploit the campaign’s quick infusion of resources.
“I promise you this: the amount of money and the amount of lobbyists that were involved in this campaign is staggering,” he said.
In a recent expletive-filled rant for Politicon, Carville knocked Harris’s campaign for multiple other moves he saw as huge miscalculations, including listening to “progressive staffers” concerned a Joe Rogan interview would not be a good look for the campaign. He also accused the campaign of sticking too much to “identity politics.”
“When you put a campaign together and you hire young people to do work, let me tell you exactly what you tell these people, what I would tell them: Not only am I not interested in your fucking opinion, I’m not even going to call you by your name. You’re 23 years old, I don’t really give a shit what you think,” he said.
Watch above via Politics War Room.
