Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville was critical of Vice President Harris’s campaign this week, saying “unfathomable” spending could hurt the Democratic brand and lead to regular audits.
“The resistance is going to have trouble raising money. These fundraisers are burnt,” Carville said during a Thanksgiving Day episode of the “Politics War Room.”
“They’re really pissed now, and the damage that the 2024 campaign has done, that the damage that this decade has done to the Democratic brand is almost unfathomable, almost unfathomable,” he added.
Carville’s comments come as Harris’s campaign spending has come under scrutiny in the aftermath of her loss to President-elect Trump in the general election earlier this month.
The campaign raised nearly $1.5 billion, Harris told donors and the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) finance directors during a call Tuesday. Despite the fundraising, reports have emerged that the campaign is in debt up upwards of $20 million, claims they have denied.
The DNC is set to hold its leadership elections in February, less than two weeks after Trump is inaugurated. During the recent podcast, Carville noted that people had asked him to throw his hat in the ring, though he suggested a bid wasn’t on his to-do list.
Still, he said the campaign’s finances will most likely be audited amid concerns.
“I would say the policy, number one, is we’re going to audit everything. We’re going to audit the campaign,” Carville said Thursday, while specifically pointing to a pro-Harris super PAC, one of her top donors during the campaign. “We’re going to audit Future Forward. We’re going to audit the DNC so people can know.”
“But I’m telling you, without complete transparency, the campaign — we think — raised a billion and a half dollars. Okay, we know that Future Forward, the last we saw, was $900 million, so we can assume that they got to a billion before election,” the strategist continued. “That’s two and a half freaking billion dollars.”
He added, “Does anybody have any idea where that money went? I mean, I have some places I [can] start looking.”
Carville, who served as a senior adviser to former President Clinton, said during Thursday’s interview that the amount of money and the “amount of lobbyists that were involved in this campaign is staggering.”
While he predicted that Harris would win the 2024 contest, he said earlier this week that it “was a very troubling election for Democrats.” A day later, Carville said the party needs to reevaluate how voters consume media so they can better retain voters.
In remarks to the press following her call with donors earlier this week, Harris chose to share optimism instead of focus on the money questions.
“I just have to remind you: Don’t you ever let anybody take your power from you. You have the same power that you did before Nov. 5, and you have the same purpose that you did, and you have the same ability to engage and inspire,” Harris said in a clip of the remarks shared by the Democratic Party on social platform X.
