James Carville: Harris Lost Despite 'Every Advantage'

Despite having "every advantage" in the 2024 race for the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris didn't offer a reason to vote for her, Democrat strategist James Carville said.

In an interview on "The Bulwark Podcast" released Saturday, Carville gave his assessment of Harris' defeat to President-elect Donald Trump.

"By the way, she had every advantage," Carville said. "We had a united party, from [former Republican Vice President] Dick Cheney to AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.]. ... We had more people on the ground, we had more volunteers, we had more money, all right? We had more surrogates, but we didn't have a reason."

The campaign was strong, but no amount of resources could make up for lacking a reason, Carville said.

"You cannot not have a reason and beat it with technology, or beat it with volunteers, or do that," Carville said. "The overall message here: A reason, and she didn't give us a reason."

He also cited President Joe Biden's commitment to staying in the race as a misstep that cost the Democrats the opportunity to hold a primary and generate excitement within the party.

"If we would have had this process, we'd have gone through it, and we would have had this mega level of talent that exists, and all of these people would have been different," Carville said. "It would have been energetic. It would have created a sense of real excitement. Biden, he just blocked all that from happening."

Democrats "flubbed it" with Harris as the candidate, Carville said, failing to offer an economic message that differed from Biden's to a nation in which two-thirds of citizens say it's on the wrong track.

"If the country wants something different, you try to give the country something different," Carville said.

Instead, the party responded to voters by saying, "We are just not going to give in to them," Carville said, adding that it reasoned, "Maybe the odiousness of Trump combined with the Dobbs decision" could "overcome" voter sentiment.

"Well, we didn't overcome it," he said.

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