On Saturday, James Carville explained to CNN’s Michael Smerconish that the economy is the central issue in American politics, saying that “people interact with the economy multiple times a day,” from grocery shopping to fueling up, and that these daily interactions make economic concerns inescapable.
It’s a fact that he forgot when he claimed just a few months ago that he was certain Kamala Harris would win the election.
Carville’s Monday morning quarterbacking continued when he acknowledged that it was a mistake for Democrats to make the election a referendum on Trump.
He said that “there's the simple basic rule of politics [that] voters want an election about them, they don’t want an election about you or your opponent.” Then he admitted that even he lost focus by making elections too much about Trump. “And for too much, we lost that. I lost it myself,'“ he said. “We made it about Trump, and we didn't make it about voters. And that's never a good idea. And how could I, at 80 years old, been doing this for 50 years, lapse into that level of stupidity? You know, I got to ask myself. And—but I think we did, and, you know, let's learn from this."
Well, @JamesCarville admits his mistake during the 2024 election, yet still clings to the absurd idea that Democrats’ messaging issues were the reason for their loss. pic.twitter.com/tVkdz30iGX
— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) January 5, 2025
James Carville certainly was right to admit he was wrong, but it’s laughable that he’s clinging to the delusion that Democrats essentially had a messaging problem in 2024. When the mainstream media is on your side, pushing your talking points and trashing your opponent all the time, messaging isn’t the problem. The problem was the Democrats’ failure to govern and make people’s lives better.
When Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the narrative presented by the White House (and echoed by the media) was that the “adults were back in charge.”
Except they weren’t, and everything quickly unraveled. Inflation spiraled out of control, the border crisis was ignored, and a series of domestic and foreign policy failures left Americans longing for the stability of the Trump years—when peace reigned and their paychecks went so much further.
How did we get there? Biden cared more about reversing the progress Trump made and doubling down on the radical policies of Barack Obama. He filled his administration with diversity hires instead of prioritizing competence and experience. The same people who told us the border was secure said inflation would be transitory. The same people who told us the economy was great failed to hold anyone accountable for the laundry list of failures that defined Biden’s term.
There’s a reason why the political tide has shifted in Trump’s favor in 2024, with him gaining among traditionally Democrat-voting constituencies, winning every key swing state, and becoming the first Republican in twenty years to win the national popular vote. His once-criticized policies, branded as extreme and divisive, are now viewed by many as necessary to remedy years of mismanagement—overregulation, foreign policy blunders, and a faltering economy. Voters now see the border wall, energy independence, and an “America First” agenda not as controversial, but as essential.
The Democrats didn’t lose because of bad messaging. They lost because of bad governing. Voters remembered that their lives were better when Trump was in office, and nothing could overcome that.
The good news is that I think they're too far over the edge of reason to figure that out.
