A popular political strategist has come forward to admit he was wrong after predicting Vice President Kamala Harris would win the 2024 elections.
In a recent editorial featured in The New York Times, James Carville admitted: “I thought Kamala Harris would win. I was wrong. While I’m sure we Democrats can argue that the loss wasn’t a landslide or take a little solace in our House performance, the most important thing for us now is to face that we were wrong and take action on the prevailing ‘why.’”
He continued: “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. 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.
Carville acknowledges that although the U.S. economy remains the world’s strongest—with GDP surging and inflation easing—many Americans aren’t satisfied with simply being better off than others. They want more, and Donald Trump capitalized on this discontent. For the first time in his political career, he won decisively by securing middle- and low-income voters focused on the economy. Democrats, meanwhile, have lost their grip on the economic narrative, and reclaiming it is essential for any chance of electoral recovery.
Perception drives politics, he said, and many Americans see us as disconnected from their economic struggles—too preoccupied with other issues to feel their pain. To turn this around, Democrats must revamp our messaging, crafting an economic narrative that is persuasive, consistent, and laser-focused on the challenges Americans face daily.
He further suggests that the target must be fixed. Democrats must stop making Trump the center of our strategy—he’s not unbeatable, he says, but the fixation is counterproductive. Many voters simply don’t care about his indictments, his authoritarian tendencies, or social issues if their own financial stability is at risk.
Trump won by channeling economic frustration, he continued, and Democrats will keep losing if we focus on anything else. Our messaging must instead attack the broader Republican economic agenda, which will persist beyond Trump. The key is opposing policies, not personalities.
Carville concluded that “Democrats must trudge headfirst with this economic agenda into the new media paradigm we now live in,” adding that, “the road ahead will not be easy, but there are no two roads to choose from. The path forward could not be more certain: We live or die by winning public perception of the economy. Thus it was, thus it is, and thus it forever shall be.”
