Democratic strategist James Carville said Democrats would have easily won the 2024 presidential election if President Biden had dropped out early.
“Had President Biden gotten out, say May of 2023, I don’t have any doubt that Democrats would have won, and it wouldn’t have been close,” Carville said during an interview on The Hill’s “Rising” on Friday.
He said the relatively narrow vote margin in the election demonstrated the “weakness” of Trump’s candidacy, even with two-thirds of the public saying the country is heading in the wrong direction under Biden.
Carville said the “fundamental” part of the election was that voters wanted change, and Democrats failed to offer “something different."
“When you have over two-thirds of the country that says we’re on the wrong direction, we need something new, you got to give them something new,” he said.
He pointed to Harris’s appearance on ABC’s “The View” in which she said “not a thing comes to mind” that she would have done differently than Biden. He said his heart “sank” when he heard that response.
Biden resisted calls to step aside for months, as questions rose about his cognitive ability and fitness for four more years in office. After a lackluster debate performance in June, Biden eventually decided to end his reelection campaign, and Harris quickly coalesced support as the Democratic nominee.
Some in the party argued that a new Democratic candidate would have more support coming out of a competitive primary, but Biden left little time for an intraparty contest.
Harris faced pressure throughout her campaign to break from Biden, particularly on the economy and Gaza war, but largely avoided public criticism, despite Biden's low approval numbers.
Carville was among many in the party who were optimistic about Harris's chances heading into November's election. He explained Friday that Democrats had been winning elections consistently since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, and the party had better organization and more money than years past.
“But we still lost the election, and we lost the election for a simple reason,” he said. “Voters wanted change, and we refused to say we were going to give them change, which hopefully never happens again.”
