Admitting Defeat

James Carville on why Trump won:

His opinion piece, published Thursday, began with, “I thought Kamala Harris would win. I was wrong. While I’m sure we Democrats can argue that the loss wasn’t a landslide or take a little solace in our House performance, the most important thing for us now is to face that we were wrong and take action on the prevailing ‘why.'” Carville went on to argue that the reason behind the Democratic Party’s failure to hold on to the White House was, is, and “always will be the economy, stupid”:

I’ve been going over this in my head for the past two months, all the variables, all the what-ifs, all the questions about Joe Biden’s re-election decisions and what kind of Democrat or message might have worked against Donald Trump. I keep coming back to the same thing. We lost for one very simple reason: It was, it is and it always will be the economy, stupid. We have to begin 2025 with that truth as our political north star and not get distracted by anything else.

He then said that most Americans do not care about Trump’s indictments or other controversies when they “cannot provide for themselves or their families,” and called on Democrats to stop focusing on Trump in general because he cannot be elected again. “Mr. Trump won the popular vote by putting the economic anger of Americans front and center. If we focus on anything else, we risk falling farther into the abyss,” he wrote, before concluding that Democrats will “live or die by winning public perception of the economy.”

Perception is reality, whether the Democrats want to admit it or not...