Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville warned Vice President Kamala Harris what to expect from Republicans should she — as is becoming increasingly likely — become the Democratic nominee to take on Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
“Look, she’s gonna get slaughtered,” Carville predicted, about how the GOP will attack Harris, to PBS’s Margaret Hoover in an interview shared online Monday.
“They’re coming out, they’re coming. And this is just part of that,” he continued. “Will be no different than it was any other time. And they have got to get up and get ready.”
Harris and her campaign have so far sought to distinguish between herself as a prosecutor and Trump as a convicted felon, and have painted Trump and his allies ― in particular his running mate, JD Vance ― as “weird.”
But they have “got to be able to defend and attack at the same time,” said Carville, who foresaw “a time of struggle of definition as to who” Harris actually is.
“And we better be ready for that,” he cautioned of Democrats.
Carville also struck an optimistic note, though.
“I feel like we are in a better position today than we were Sunday morning,” he said. “So I will take small victories where I get them.”
Carville, who had called for Biden to nix his reelection campaign, last week warned of “triumphalism” among Democrats.
“It’s going to be very close, and I understand that people are feeling a lot better and excited, but that excitement has got to be tempered with realism, and the realism is she has a tough campaign going on.”
