This is an adapted excerpt from the July 26 episode of “Morning Joe.”
During an appearance on “The Beat,” veteran Democratic strategist James Carville told Ari Melber that members of his party were too enthusiastic about the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris:
I have to be the skunk at the garden party. This is too triumphalist, OK? This is — everybody’s giddy. I look at the coverage and it’s great. [But] great ready, they’re coming. All right? And it’s good. Everybody should feel good and liberated and everything else. But if we don’t win the election, we haven’t done anything.
Gee, why such a Debbie Downer? The overwhelmingly positive response to the Harris candidacy is its own cause for celebration among Democrats who have been concerned by the state of the race for months. A strong campaign team can make great television ads or build a great field organization, but it can’t manufacture enthusiasm for your candidate. A fired-up base of supporters is the fuel that propels the most successful campaigns and — as one of the most heralded political strategists of the last three decades — Carville certainly knows this. I guess he’s just nervous about the onslaught of attacks that await the vice president.
A fired-up base of supporters is the fuel that propels the most successful campaigns.
You can be both enthusiastic about the Democrats’ new ticket and clear-eyed about the challenges Harris and her running mate will face. As someone who was on the front lines of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, I know I am. It’s going to get ugly and it’s going to be a slog, which is all the more reason why the vice president needs joyful warriors who will have her back during the brutal days ahead. So don’t be a buzzkill. We all need some positive vibes.
Knowing of Carville’s anxiety about “preachy females” in the Democratic Party, I also have to wonder if his lamentations about Harris supporters being “giddy” and feeling “liberated” are directed at voters he assumes are elated by the notion of electing the first woman president.
That’s not my motivation, nor was it during the 2016 campaign. I just thought Clinton was the best person for the job — which is how I feel this time with Harris. And I think women are extremely motivated to help the vice president now because our lives and those of our daughters and granddaughters are the most threatened by Donald Trump’s extreme agenda.
I know firsthand the despair and disempowerment women have felt as we watched polls slip away toward a Trump landslide win. They had left us wondering if we had any agency in this country at all. Was it too late to save democracy or protect the young women and girls in this country?
Now, we have a fighting chance to win.
Now, we have a fighting chance to win. I think it’s that hope, that belief that it’s not too late and that there is something each of us can do to ward off a Trump win and secure victory for Harris that accounts for the massive show of support from women and men. Less than a week into her campaign, women and men both have undertaken historic organizing efforts and raised millions of dollars for her.
The vice president has shown she’s more than ready for this fight, and that’s inspired us to rally behind her in a very big way. We feel a responsibility to get her elected and empowered to get the job done. Given the dark weeks that preceded this moment, it feels liberating.