Veteran political strategist James Carville reiterated his 2024 prediction Wednesday, outlining three reasons why he believes Vice President Harris will be victorious over former President Trump in November.
Carville, the architect of former President Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, pointed to the GOP’s losing record since 2018, Harris’s fundraising advantage over Trump and the will of the American people to reject the former president once again.
“The biggest reason Mr. Trump will lose is that the whole Republican Party has been on a losing streak since Mr. Trump took it over,” he said in an essay published Wednesday by The New York Times.
“See 2018: the largest House landslide for Democrats in a midterm election since Watergate. See 2020: He was decisively bucked from the White House by Joe Biden. See 2022: an embarrassment of a midterm for Republicans off the heels of Dobbs,” Carville wrote.
The strategist pointed to Democrats’ success in special elections and argued that Trump had “not learned from his electoral losses nor done the necessary work to assemble a broad electoral coalition in 2024.”
He contrasted that with Harris’s coalition — which encompasses progressive politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former GOP Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).
“This is shaping out to be a record-turnout election — and if the bigger coalition turns out with equal enthusiasm, it will be lights out for Mr. Trump,” he wrote.
Carville doubled down on his prediction Monday, saying “I think that Harris is going to win.”
“Let me just say that out front. I’m doubling down on that,” he added, but cautioned that, “I could be wrong.”
The veteran Democratic adviser also noted that the Harris’s campaign’s fundraising advantage will likely play a huge part in turning out swing-state voters, particularly suburban women. The Democratic nominee’s campaign raised almost $360 million in September and over $1 billion since joining the White House race in late July — after President Biden stepped aside.
“All this cash not only effectively offsets the flow of money funneling in for Mr. Trump from some tech billionaires, but it has also given Ms. Harris the resources she needs to persuade swing voters with ads and to organize on the ground,” Carville wrote in the essay, while also praising the vice president’s field operation.
With the election less than two weeks away, Carville said his final reason is “100 percent emotional,” adding that the U.S. is not as politically divided as it is often portrayed.
“A vast majority of Americans are rational, reasonable people of good will,” he wrote. “I refuse to believe that the same country that has time and again overcome its mistakes to bend its future toward justice will make the same mistake twice.”
“America overcame Mr. Trump in 2020. I know that we know we are better than this,” Carville added.
