James Carville Admits He ‘Lapsed Into’ a ‘Level of Stupidity’ During Harris Campaign: ‘It’s Very Depressing’
Democratic strategist James Carville admitted on Saturday that he “lapsed into” a “level of stupidity” during Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed campaign.
Carville joined CNN’s Michael Smerconish to discuss a New York Times op-ed published this week in which Carville pushed Democrats to be more focused on economic issues and less focused on President-elect Donald Trump. The op-ed followed Carville being critical of Harris’s campaign.
In his op-ed, Carville doubled down on the most famous line to come out of his decades-spanning political career: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The once advisor to former President Bill Clinton said he lost sight of this during the election and he argued Democrats should frame even issues like abortion around the economy.
Carville said:
We interact with the economy, people do multiple times a day. And even other issues, let’s take an issue that has really worked for us. The abortion issue, that is an economic issue to many people. I mean, I was thinking, you know, if you work at the Walmart in Ponchatoula, you’re probably 600 miles away from any abortion access, assuming you could afford to get there and you already have two kids and you’re having a child in a state that leads the United States in children born into poverty. And we have a law that says you don’t have any other option but to have that child. Well, that’s an economic issue also. And there’s so many other things that you can frame as economic issues. But every day you go to the grocery store, you go to the drugstore, you go to the gas station, you go online, you have 40, you know, economic interactions every day, and you just can’t remove that from people’s lives, you just can’t do it. And we’ve tried and I’ve tried to work around and I’ve said, well, maybe more money and better surrogates and more storefront field organizations can make up for it. And I was wrong.
Smerconish read a quote from a Democrat who commented on Carville’s piece: “Character, honesty, decency, intelligence, democracy. None of these seem to matter in our country when electing a president.”
Carville agreed with the sentiment and called it “depressing” to reflect on the “disaster” campaign of Harris, but argued it’s necessary.
He said:
I totally agree with that person. It’s very depressing. But if you’re doing political strategy, you know, if you have an airplane crash, you’ve got to go back and find out what went wrong. You don’t say, well, let’s just forget about it and move on. No, was the flap set in the right setting or, you know, was there something that the pilot didn’t pay attention to? I don’t know, but it is sort of depressing. But, you know, 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. And that’s all. It’s never a good idea. And how could I, at 80 years old, been doing this for 50 years, lapse into that level of stupidity? You know, I’ve got to ask myself. But I think we did. And, you know, let’s learn from this. It’s a disaster. I agree, it’s depressing, but to have an event like this and not learn from it, I think is the biggest mistake we can make.
Watch above via CNN.
