Most polls are showing Democrat nominee Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump as the election approaches, but Democrat strategist James Carville warned Thursday that this is no time to be complacent.
"We have to win by more than five and that's no jive," Carville said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "Anything closer, it will be stolen from [Biden]. That's a fact. The courts, the federal courts, are completely stacked in the Republicans' favor."
Trump will "do anything he can" to win, Carville said.
To get Trump out of office, "you literally have to annihilate him," Carville emphasized. "You have to beat him by more than five points in order to ensure that we have a smooth transition of power and we can get our lives back. Because without that, it will continue to beat us."
Carville said he's optimistic about Biden's chances, but "the last thing I am is complacent."
He added that his own "algorithm" tells him that "Americans are sick of living like this" when it comes to Trump.
"I think what Trump has done the whole campaign is the best thing he could do for Biden or the country," said Carville. "He's made it all about him, and, you know, it's the economy, stupid, or it's about this, and what Donald Trump has successfully done is put right at the center of this election and made the election totally about him."
But that has made Trump himself the "one issue" in the presidential race, not the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, foreign policy, or anything else, Carville said
"That's what people are voting against and voting for, and he has some instinct that his base will come out and support him and I think that he's correct on that instinct," said Carville. "I think there will be a high turnout in these kinds of Trumpy areas, but what we saw in 2018 was when we had swing voters and you had the enormous shift in the suburbs. I do think that there's sufficient evidence to say that we're cutting into his base. It will support him, it will support him strongly, but it will not be as overwhelming as it was in 2016 and I think that's a key factor in this election."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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