Carville warns Biden: Don’t let Trump off the hook
By Auwal Ahmad
Democratic strategist James Carville has urged President Biden to keep former President Trump in the spotlight as he campaigns for re-election in 2024. Carville, who helped Bill Clinton win the White House in 1992, said that Trump is not a normal candidate and should not be treated as such by the media or the voters.
“You can’t let him up. You can’t normalise him. You can’t say he’s just another politician. He’s not. He’s a threat to democracy. He’s a threat to the rule of law. He’s a threat to everything we stand for,” Carville said on a podcast hosted by comedian Bill Maher.
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Carville said that Biden should use a “meat cleaver” to attack Trump and his record and not shy away from highlighting the former president’s role in inciting the deadly Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. He also said that Biden should remind voters of Trump’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, his corruption scandals, his lies, and his divisive rhetoric.
“He’s the best thing we have going for us. He’s the gift that keeps on giving. He’s the reason we won in 2020. He’s the reason we can win in 2024. But we have to keep him front and center. We can’t let him fade away,” Carville said.
Carville’s comments come as recent polls show that Biden and Trump are tied at 44 percent support among registered voters in a hypothetical match-up, with 7 percent undecided and 4 percent saying they will not vote. Carville said that he was worried that some Democrats were complacent about Biden’s chances and that some voters were forgetting how dangerous Trump was.
“Let’s say the election was November 3 of this year. And they said the candidates are Joe Biden, the Democrat, Donald Trump, the Republican, Joe Manchin, Larry Hogan, No Labels, and Cornel West.
Trump would be a betting favorite. If I told you I would give you even money, you would not take that bet,” Carville said. “And so somebody better wake up,” he added.
Carville also suggested that Biden should consider passing the torch to a younger and more dynamic Democrat who could energise the base and appeal to the moderates. He said that any Democrat under 60 with a D by their name could beat Trump, as long as they were not “stupid woke.”
“He’s [Biden] going to lose; it will be Ruth Bader Biden, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the presidency,” Maher said. “It’s not a good look. And any 50ish, not stupid, woke Democrat with a D by their name—people just vote D and R—that person can win,” he added.
Carville agreed, adding that “if we have somebody under 60 and ran against Trump, we’d get 55 percent.”
