James Carville sees an advantage for Kamala Harris to exploit on an issue that is supposed to be Trump’s strength. It’s the economy, stupid.
Trump “has given her a giant opening” by telling voters “they have nothing to lose” financially by voting for him. Carville’s advice to Harris is to remind voters the opposite is true with an argument that goes like this:
“He thinks you have nothing to lose. I think you have something to gain. I think most of you feel like you’re pretty secure in your jobs. If you have a little bit in your IRA, you’ve got a little bit more now. You’ve got something to lose.”
The hardest, most difficult strategic thing you can do in American presidential politics is — when can you take credit for the economy? The economy was clearly gangbusters in the ’90s. We got wiped out in ’94 because the recovery had not been underway sufficiently where its tentacles got down to ordinary people.
And so now I get five texts a day [saying]: “Look at this stuff!” Somebody just sent me how good growth was. And if you argue with people by telling them that the economy is better than they think, you’re almost [always] going to lose that argument.
But Trump came in and gave [her] a golden opportunity. Because he didn’t say, “the economy is sluggish” or “prices are too high. I’ll pick it up.” He said, “You have nothing to lose. It’s awful. The whole thing has fallen apart. We’re going to start slapping tariffs on everything. We’re going to start deporting people.”
I think people do feel like they have something to lose. But he has moved the ball from “Is it a good economy or a bad economy?” to an economy where you have nothing to lose. And that’s a big shift. Because you now are not burdened with trying to tell people it’s better than you think. You can just say, “He thinks you have nothing to lose. I think you have something to gain. I think most of you feel like you’re pretty secure in your jobs. If you have a little bit in your IRA, you’ve got a little bit more now. You’ve got something to lose.”
And if she talks about it like that and keeps running loops of tape of [Trump saying], “What the hell do you have to lose? It’s all falling apart,” I don’t think that’s a hard sell to tell people that you’ve got something to lose here.