A democratic strategist has blamed Kamala Harris’ election defeat on her failure to differentiate herself from President Biden.
While pundits and analysts are pointing fingers at a myriad of reasons for the Democrats failure in the election, James Carville has boiled it down to one moment.
Speaking to Tim Miller on ‘The Bulwark Podcast, James Carville said it was Harris’ failure to answer a simple question while appearing on The View.
She was asked by host Sunny Hostin if she would have done anything differently form Biden, Harris told her nothing came to mind.
Carville said: ‘That’s the money question. That’s the one that everybody wants to know the answer to. And you freeze. You literally freeze and say, ‘Well, I can’t think of anything’.’
He added: ‘The country wants something different. And she’s asked, as is so often the case, in a friendly audience, on ‘The View,’ ‘How would you be different than Biden?’ That’s the one question that you exist to answer, alright? That is it.’
Harris had appeared on ‘The View’ in October, with the hosts all expressing their repeated support for her over the course of her campaign.
She was also asked about what she seen as the specific difference between a Harris presidency and a Biden presidency.
Harris said: ‘We’re obviously two different people. One of the issues I’m focused on is what we do with home healthcare.’
Ahead of Tuesday’s shellacking, Carville had predicted that Harris would manage to pull off a win, despite polls showing Donald Trump in a better position.
He has since expressed his frustration at Americans for following for Trump’s ‘s***’, saying the result was depressing.
Carville said: ‘So I have to reevaluate. I’m sure I’ll come up with something to make me feel good again, but right now today it’s hard, I’ll be honest with you.
‘And the hardest thing is that I look across this country and tens of millions of people fell for that s***, and it’s depressing.’
Trump insulted Harris for her remarks on The View, saying: ‘She said I can’t think of anything. I think the other one asking the question is dumber than Kamala.
‘She didn’t know what the hell to say,’ Trump said of Harris’s response. ‘But think of it, it was a softball question.’
Trump said Harris should have brought up the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel or anything else.
‘How about the fact that the United States is a laughing stock all over the world? How about that she failed on the witch hunts?’ Trump said.
While Harris focused much of her initial message around themes of joy, Trump channeled a powerful sense of anger and resentment among voters.
He seized on frustrations over high prices and fears about crime and migrants who illegally entered the country on Biden’s watch.
He also highlighted wars in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to cast Democrats as presiding over – and encouraging – a world in chaos.
It was a formula Trump perfected in 2016, when he cast himself as the only person who could fix the country’s problems, often borrowing language from dictators.
Trump’s win against Harris, the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket, marks the second time he has defeated a female rival in a general election.
Harris rose to the top of the ticket after Biden exited the race amid alarm about his advanced age.
Despite an initial surge of energy around her campaign, she struggled during a compressed timeline to convince disillusioned voters that she represented a break from an unpopular administration.