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Is This the One Moment That Doomed Harris' Campaign?

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  November 12, 2024 8:00 AM

Democrat strategist James Carville predicted Vice President Kamala Harris would win last week’s election. In fact, he wrote an op-ed in The New York Times telling readers he was “certain” she would. Like many political analysts, he was wrong, of course, and now he thinks he’s identified the one moment that doomed the vice president’s campaign. It was Harris’ response to a softball question that she should have been prepared to answer. After all, she was trying to frame herself as the change candidate, despite currently serving in the White House. She didn’t have the political skill to do that and it was evident she hadn’t really given it too much thought when she appeared on “The View” for a friendly interview.

Co-host Sunny Hostin asked her what she would have done differently than her boss, and Harris couldn’t name a single thing. 

"I think if this campaign is reducible to one moment, we are in a 65 percent wrong-track country. The country wants something different. And she’s asked, as is so often the case, in a friendly audience, on 'The View,' 'How would you be different than Biden?' That’s the one question that you exist to answer, alright? That is it. That’s the money question. That's the one you want. That’s the one that everybody wants to know the answer to. And you freeze! You literally freeze and say, ‘Well, I can’t think of anything,’" Carville told Tim Miller on "The Bulwark Podcast." 

"So we said 65 percent want something different, we are just not going to give in to them, but maybe the odiousness of Trump combined with the Dobbs decision, we can overcome it. Well, we didn’t overcome it. But when we go back and history unearths this, it’s going to be right there on 'The View.' And I think her name was Sunny Hostin, asked a question, and that’s the most devastating answer you could imagine," Carville continued.