Former Clinton strategist James Carville warned last week that it may not be possible for Vice President Kamala Harris to sustain the same level of excitement that was generated after President Joe Biden initially endorsed her for the Democratic nomination on July 21.
Carville appeared on PBS’s “Firing Line” last Monday where host Margaret Hoover noted the rush of campaign contributions that met Harris’ entry into the 2024 election. She asked Carville how Vice President Harris could sustain that excitement over the next 100 days.
Carville noted that much of the excitement over Kamala Harris was prompted by Democrat voters who were eager for a different candidate than the 81-year-old Joe Biden.
He suggested that Harris projected an excitement about the future and said much of the enthusiasm surrounding her fledgling campaign was coming not from any particular policy but “a general feeling” from voters who wanted someone else to support other than President Biden or former President Donald Trump.
Carville conceded that a Harris candidacy fit the bill but added that she would likely “get slaughtered” in the campaign.
He said Republicans would come after Harris and warned that her campaign had to be ready to defend her record while simultaneously going on the attack.
Carville suggested that the Democrats would struggle to find a way to define the vice president but added that the party was in a better position with Kamala as the nominee than they were before Joe Biden dropped out.
So far, the Harris campaign has kept the presumptive nominee under wraps, refusing to do any one-on-one interviews with media outlets or press conferences where reporters can directly question the vice president.
Instead, the carefully managed campaign consists of public events where Harris delivers prepared remarks to sympathetic crowds while her campaign releases statements to the press announcing that the candidate has changed many of the positions she held during her failed 2020 presidential run, including support for Medicare for All and mandatory gun buyback programs.
The Real Clear Politics national polling average showed Trump with a two-point lead over Harris by July 28, 48.1 percent to 46.1 percent.
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