Elections

‘I’m Certain’: James Carville Makes Bold Election Prediction

MUST BE NICE

Longtime Democratic operative James Carville is confident one candidate has it in the bag.

James Carville.
ICSS/Reuters

The polls may be showing a dead heat, but one man says he’s “certain” of the 2024 election’s outcome: Kamala Harris will win, predicts James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist.

In an op-ed for The New York Times, Carville makes a bold prediction. “Today I am pulling my stool up to the political poker table to throw my chips all in: America, it will all be OK. Ms. Harris will be elected the next president of the United States,” he writes.

Carville lays out the three reasons why he believes this.

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One, ”[Donald] Trump is a repeat electoral loser,“ he says, and his presidency set the Republican Party on a similar course; Harris, by contrast, has managed to whip up comparable enthusiasm in just three months of campaigning.

Two, Harris has vastly outraised Trump, even with the $75 million donation the latter just received from his billionaire sidekick, Elon Musk.

Three, Carville simply has a feeling Harris will win, in part because she has aisle-bridging power that her opponent lacks.

“If the Cheneys and AOC get that the Constitution and our democracy are on the ballot, every true conservative and every true progressive should get it too.”

Should is different from will, of course, but Carville called the 2020 race correctly and flagged Joe Biden’s age as an issue well before his party caught on.

On the other hand, he declared earlier this year that Democrats were polling poorly because they were letting “too many preachy females” do the talking, so he’s not right about everything.

Carville writes in the Times that a vote against Trump is a chance to stop the rise of MAGA politics in the U.S.

“For the past decade, Mr. Trump has infected American life with a malignant political sickness, one that would have wiped out many other global democracies. On Jan. 6, 2021, our democracy itself nearly succumbed to it,” he writes. “But Mr. Trump has stated clearly that this will be the last time he runs for president. That is exactly why we should be exhilarated by what comes next: Mr. Trump is a loser; he is going to lose again. And it is highly likely that there will be no other who can carry the MAGA mantle in his wake—certainly not his running mate.”

“In two weeks, we not only have a chance to elect Kamala Harris as president, but a chance to bring finality to the sordid career of Donald Trump and drive MAGA into a prolonged remission,” Carville says.

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