Democrat strategist James Carville said Thursday that he was wrong about the 2024 election and chalked Vice President Kamala Harris' loss up to the phrase he famously coined in 1992: "It’s the economy, stupid."
In an opinion piece for The New York Times, Carville said he has been doing some soul-searching in an effort to determine what went wrong for Democrats when President-elect Donald Trump swept to victory Nov. 5.
"I've been going over this in my head for the past two months, all the variables, all the what-ifs, all the questions about Joe Biden's re-election decisions and what kind of Democrat or message might have worked against Donald Trump," he wrote. "I keep coming back to the same thing.
"We lost for one very simple reason: It was, it is and it always will be the economy, stupid. We have to begin 2025 with that truth as our political north star and not get distracted by anything else."
Over the summer, the veteran political strategist said he had doubts if his observation that the economy is the deciding factor in elections still proved out more than 30 years later. At the time, President Joe Biden was struggling with low approval ratings despite a strong and improving economy.
"I'm starting to doubt myself a little bit, because this economy is quite good," Carville told CNN in August. "Maybe it will kick in. And sometimes it takes a while for people to feel it."
Reflecting in his opinion piece, Carville said that Trump connected with middle class and low-income voters by tapping into their anxiety about the U.S. economy and channeling their economic rage.
"Democrats have flat-out lost the economic narrative," he wrote. "The only path to electoral salvation is to take it back. Perception is everything in politics, and a lot of Americans perceive us as out to lunch on the economy — not feeling their pain, or else caring too much about other things instead."
Arguing that many Democrats have become overly focused on the president-elect's legal issues and social issues, Carville said that the party should find its way back to relevancy by zeroing in on issues that affect Americans’ everyday lives.
"Furthermore, it’s clear many Americans do not give a rat's tail about Mr. Trump's indictments — even if they are justified — or about his anti-democratic impulses or about social issues if they cannot provide for themselves or their families," he said.
Democrats "must be on the offensive with a wildly popular and populist economic agenda they cannot be for," Carville said, suggesting they force Republicans to oppose raising the minimum wage, efforts to codify Roe v. Wade into law, and bipartisan immigration reform.
The 80-year-old architect of former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory also urged Democrats to embrace the new media environment, as Trump did when he appeared on popular podcasts like "The Joe Rogan Experience."
"Podcasts are the new print newspapers and magazines," Carville said. "Social platforms are a social conscience. And influencers are digital stewards of that conscience. Our economic message must be sharp, crisp, clear — and we must take it right to the people.
"To Democratic presidential hopefuls, your auditions for 2028 should be based on two things: 1) How authentic you are on the economy and 2) how well you deliver it on a podcast."
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