James Carville to Democrats: Don't Get Too Cocky

Veteran political strategist James Carville said Democrats should keep their hopes in check about Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democrat nominee for president.

Carville, appearing on MSNBC's "The Beat with Ari Melber," expressed concern at how cocky Democrats were acting since President Joe Biden dropped out and was replaced by his vice president.

"I have to be the skunk at the garden party. This is too triumphalist, OK?" Carville said. "Everybody's giddy. I look at the coverage and it's great. If I had to write a play about what I think, it'd be entitled, 'The Icepick Cometh,' OK? Get ready, they're coming. All right? And it's good. Everybody should feel good and liberated and everything else. But if we don't win the election, we haven't done anything."

Carville warned that things were really going to pick up once Harris' honeymoon period ended.

"This kind of giddy elation is not going to be very helpful much longer because that's not what we're going to be faced with," said Carville, who ran Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. "I think the vice president, to put it in athletic terms, needs a really good cutman on the corner because she's getting ready to get cut."

The Republican Party will come at Harris with everything it has, Carville said, using more athletic metaphors.

"When you go out there, you're facing Alabama," he said. "Just get ready because these Republicans, they got caught off guard, but they're going to get their sea legs and we're having to get a campaign, a whole campaign started.

"All I'm doing is saying watch out, people, don't get too far out there. If we don't win this, all this good feeling is going to evaporate and be all for naught, and that's what I kind of think my role is right now."

In an interview on "The Don Lemon Show," Carville also said while Harris is doing well, the worst is yet to come.

"This is the best day that she's going to have for the rest of the campaign, they're coming," he said. "They were hit real bad, they were confused, but they're getting unconfused now and Democrats have got to get ready."

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