Democratic strategist James Carville said on Tuesday that his biggest concern for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is that she can’t effectively explain why she was so liberal in 2019.
Harris supported many left-wing policies during her 2020 campaign, which she launched in January 2019, including a fracking ban, mandatory federal gun buybacks and the elimination of private health insurance. Carville, on “THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent” podcast, said “she has an ineffective answer for 2019” when asked about the “nightmare scenario” for Harris’ campaign.
“[Harris] really moved to the left in the primaries in 2019. Leading up to the 2020 primaries. It was bad. And she needs overarching answers to place all that in context,” Carville added. “I think she will have one, but that’s the number one thing that worries me.”
“They’re dangerous. They’re hit. They were knocked off their balance. They’re still off balance. But they’ll get it back,” the Democratic strategist said, clarifying he was referring to “the Trump people.”
Harris has backtracked on some of her positions since launching her 2024 campaign, but she has yet to hold an interview to answer questions about why she has flipped her agenda this cycle. Carville told Republican strategist Lance Trover on Monday that it is ridiculous to pressure Harris to sit down for an interview during this period of her 2024 campaign, which she launched on July 21.
“Where is it written that in the first five weeks of the campaign, you have to do a long-form interview? That’s just a made-up thing,” Carville said. “That’s absurd. She’s been quite busy and has done quite well. And she’s got more things to do than sit around and wait around and do a long-form interview, of which after you do it, the press is going to forget about it anyway.”
Former President Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod on Friday said that Harris’ 2020 campaign was inauthentic, as she is not truly a far-left candidate.
“She wasn’t successful in 2020. And I don’t think she was a very good candidate in 2020. She didn’t make it to 2020, actually. Because this is who she is, I think the way she’s running now. She spent her career as a prosecutor, as an attorney general. I think she’s a center-left Democrat,” Axelrod told host Dana Bash. “I think she has obviously a lot of experience on the issue of crime. In many ways, the themes that you hear here reflect who she is and I don’t think she ran on, you know, she basically shoved a bunch of her life, or her advisors did, away four years ago.”
Read: Jack Smith Files Revised Indictment Against Donald Trump Following Supreme Court Ruling
Harris is currently leading former President Donald Trump by 1.5% nationally, while Trump is leading the vice president by .1% in the main battleground states, according to the RealClearPolling averages.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.