Worth noting that the feeling was mutual for most of this year, right up until Kamala Harris imploded in the election. James Carville tried warning Harris and the team around her repeatedly — in the media at least, if not through more discreet channels — to stop talking like they just came out of the Womyn’s Studies annex to the Harvard Faculty Lounge. To the extent anyone responded at all to the Ragin’ Cajun, they dismissed him as crank rather than someone who, y’know, won a couple of presidential elections for Democrats. 

With that in mind, you have to allow Carville his bitter vindication here. But does Carville actually identify the real failure of this campaign, or does he dance around it? Count me in for the latter, while enjoying the floor show nonetheless (via Red State, NSFW):

Dem strategist James Carville absolutely obliterates Kamala's progressive staffers who kept Harris from doing the @joerogan interview: I would tell them, "Not only am I not interested in your f**king opinion, I’m not even gonna call you by your name."

"You’re 23 years old. I… pic.twitter.com/r3NpDVKyDq

— Rusty (@Rusty_Weiss) November 26, 2024

“The vice president was thinking about going on Joe Rogan’s show, and a lot of the younger progressive staffers pitched a hissy fit. Supposedly, the campaign said that that wasn’t a determinative factor, but they did," Carville insisted.

"When you put a campaign together and you hire young people to do work, let me tell you exactly what you tell these people — what I would tell ’em,” he continued. “Not only am I not interested in your f**king opinion, I’m not even gonna call you by your name."

"You’re 23 years old. I don’t really give a s**t what you think.”

This came from a 27-minute rant uncorked by Carville that Rusty Weiss recommends for Democrats ready to listen to some wisdom. (Click over to Red State if you're interested.) He also lists a few of Carville's earlier insights, including an interview with Maureen Dowd that criticized the feminist-scolding tone that had already become apparent in Joe Biden's re-election campaign. He predicted disaster with young men at the time based on Democrats dominated by "too many preachy females," a point that an interview with Joe Rogan could have ameliorated to some extent. 

Carville hits on the symptoms in this rant, while missing the main failure. The identity of the main failure is Kamala Harris. Start there, and everything Carville says here and said earlier fits right into the full picture.

First off, Carville's specific complaint here is that the progressive cherubs were allowed to rule the roost. Well, whose fault is that? Harris may have had an abbreviated campaign for her own candidacy, but she spent months working on Biden's campaign in this cycle and another four months in 2020 on the first campaign that got her elected VP. Harris wasn't a rookie in politics, after all. 

And Harris was running for president. As in, Leader of the Free World, not to mention Top Dog of America's Far-Too-Large Executive Branch. Are we to believe that Harris couldn't even stand up to 23-year-old flunkies in her office? If so, isn't that just a wee bit disqualifying for the office Harris sought? If that's true -- and I rather doubt it -- then America dodged a yuuuuuge bullet. (Actually, I don't doubt that conclusion, just Carville's predicate.)

So what did happen? Harris almost certainly had no intention of doing any long-form interview with anyone not already an ally, unless absolutely necessary. She did one with Charlamagne Tha God that didn't go as well as expected, another on The View that probably wrecked the campaign for good, and a CNN town hall that made the situation worse -- and those were with sympathetic hosts. She only took on Bret Baier in a trainwreck interview when her campaign got desperate to portray her as something other than a complete cypher. Harris never even held a full press conference in 107 days; her non-infomercial interviews with national media outlets could be counted on one hand and still have the finger left over that Carville just gave Harris campaign advisors. 

The problem wasn't that progressive staffers blocked Harris from accepting Rogan's offer. It's not even that Harris decided against it herself, nor that she is apparently making it look as though she just got bad advice. It's that Harris was such a bad candidate that appearing on Rogan would have been a word-salad disaster, and everyone knows it. To the extent that her campaign staff advised against it, that was likely to protect Harris from her another utter humiliation that might have been harder to slough off than the Baier interview debacle. 

Carville shouldn't waste his time chewing out 23-year-old progressive campaign strategists. He should be cussing out Joe Biden for insisting that Harris replace him on the ticket, and the rest of the party going along rather than hold an abbreviated open process to select the most capable candidate. But since that's the political equivalent of the solution to Murder on the Orient Express (spoiler alert!), it's easier to pick on the rookies. 

Addendum: Big-ticket Dem donor John Morgan is closer to the mark.

HOLY SMOKES: Democrat mega-donor John Morgan says Kamala Harris’s political future is OVER after she completely botched her campaign.

“If you can’t run a campaign, you can’t run a country.”

When Chris Cuomo asked him if someone stole the donation money, Morgan replied, “Well,… pic.twitter.com/aFWIIIQ3XJ

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) November 26, 2024

The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today's show features:

•  Monday marked the end of an era -- we hope. 
• Andrew Malcolm and I discuss the ignominious end of Jack Smith's federal indictments against Donald Trump. Will the humiliating results of the First Lawfare Election convince Democrats to stop using it? 
• We also discuss Trump's Cabinet appointments, as well as the most lame duck of all lame ducks in the White House at the moment. 
• Will the media ever account for its dreadful cover-up for Biden and the propagandizing during the election cycle?

  
  

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!