Senior Democratic strategist James Carville on Friday severely criticized former Vice President Kamala Harris, saying that the Democratic Party’s decision to nominate her for president was akin to subbing in a “seventh-string quarterback” to a “Super Bowl” election.
“You can’t address a problem unless you’re honest about a problem,” he said on PBS’s “Firing Line” with Margaret Hoove. “And none of this was inevitable. Never should have happened.”
GOP strategist Mike Murphy also spoke on the show, and both he and Carville agreed that former President Biden was to blame for President Trump’s victory, as he did not end his reelection bid soon enough.
Carville added that the country has not had an inspirational presidential candidate since 2012, when President Obama ran for reelection.
Carville noted Biden is often praised by Democrats as a “good man,” but added that this quality does not matter. “If you don’t win the god**mn election, you’ve done nothing! Zip, nada. You don’t count,” he said.
“And people would have seen that, they would have gone, ‘I didn’t know that people like that, that can actually complete a sentence,’” he said. “We have not had an inspirational presidential candidate since 2012.”
Carville argued that the Democratic Party should become aggressive and populist instead of being “nice people.”
“[They think] we’ve got to be, you know, nice to people,” he said. “Screw that! Run over them.”
Carville has been critical of the Harris campaign since Democrats’ 2024 election losses.
He had earlier predicted that Harris would win against Trump, but called the results “very depressing” in a post-election interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish.
