James Carville, it seems, hasn't yet forgiven Joe Biden for the 2024 election. Of course, he's not without reason, given Biden's dropping out at the last moment and endorsing Kamala Harris, who ended up being the worst candidate for political office since W.C. Fields ran for the presidency of the Temperance Society. But Carville has never been one to suffer in silence, and while he sees a path by which Biden could have been the "toast of Washington," a notion which makes most folks burst out laughing, he's still aiming some heat old Scranton Joe's way.
Democratic strategist James Carville called President Biden the “most tragic figure in modern American politics,” criticizing the president for his decision to wait until so close to Election Day to remove himself from the presidential race.
Carville blamed the historic dropout for Vice President Harris’s loss.
“The different scenario would be, if he would have — in September of 2023 or August — said that he wasn’t going to run. Goddamn, we would have won this election,” he said on the latest episode of his podcast, “Politics War Room.”
Would they, though?
The Democrats were on the wrong side of every major issue in the 2024 campaign. They were wrong on immigration, they were wrong on inflation, and they were wrong on the economy. If the Democrats had thrown the convention open for all candidates, they still would have been wrong. If they had run Gavin Newsom, Kathy Holchul, or Pothole Pete Buttigieg, they still would have been wrong. If Joe Biden had stuck with his initial promise to not seek reelection, they still would have been wrong.
James Carville is an ideologue, but he's not stupid. It's a little baffling that he doesn't see that.
Here's where Carville really goes off the rails:
“And it wouldn’t have been that close, because we would have had so many frickin’ talented people that were running, and he would be sitting here right now getting ready to leave on a high note. They would be naming commissions to figure out what are we going to name after him.”
He added that Biden “knows he f‑‑‑ed up” and would have been “the toast of Washington” had he made different choices.
That last sentence, that is the very definition of damning with faint praise.
Joe Biden being the "toast of Washington" is about as likely as Pol Pot being nominated for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The outgoing president is befuddled, senile, corrupt and vindictive. His presidency has been marked by a massive influx of illegal aliens, many from countries hostile to the United States. Joe Biden has overseen double-digit inflation and a spike in energy prices while clamping down on domestic production; his administration has been historic only in the sense that it was historically disastrous.
These, not petty issues of timing and tactics, are the issues besetting the Democrats today. It is, again, somewhat surprising that James Carville can't seem to see that.
See Related: Carville: Harris Had 'Every Advantage' - Except the One She Needed
James Carville, in his insistence on blaming Joe Biden for a problem that really belongs to the Democratic Party as a whole, sure sounds a lot like he's reading the outgoing president's political eulogy — and maybe the eulogy of the Democratic Party, as least as it is constituted today.
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