AUSTIN, TX – Democratic strategist James Carville and The Free Press founder Bari Weiss clashed over Vice President Kamala Harris at the 2023 Texas Tribune Festival Thursday in Austin.
During a live recording of her “Honestly” podcast, Weiss had a lengthy discussion with Carville about the current state of the 2024 presidential race.
Though the conversation was mostly cordial, perhaps the most animated exchange occurred when Carville was asked to weigh in on the repeated suggestion floated in the media and Democratic circles that President Biden dump Harris, who faces even worse polling than the president himself, from the 2024 ticket in order to excite voters.
Carville responded by immediately defending Harris, pointing to Biden’s own dismal polling as a “ceiling” for the VP.
“What I would like to see is her and about five or six other people start running to court delegates and be on TV and be on the road,” Carville said about his support for a competitive Democratic primary before reiterating she was being unfairly tarred by the president’s unpopularity.
“C’mon,” Weiss reacted.
“When she speaks, it’s like, it’s like ‘Veep,’” she added, referring to the hit HBO comedy.
Carville doubled down on his defense of Harris by comparing the treatment against her to Hillary Clinton.
“Anytime a female gets big in national politics, they get accused of shrieking,” Carville said. “Maybe she’s not the greatest public speaker in the world, but a lot of the stuff that’s been heaped on her, I think is, you know… some of it is stereotyping. And every time I see that with a female politician, it’s always fingernails on a blackboard.”
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Weiss took exception to Carville’s dismissal of Harris’ critics as misogyny, telling him “I think I might be among the last people that would be turned off by a powerful woman politician considering that I am a woman and gay.”
“I’m not saying you were turned off by her or turned off by a very powerful woman politician. I’m just saying that sometimes voters, and you know this,” Carville said. “If I take Sue Jones and Jim Johnson and certain things that just- the male or female political science knows that certain qualities that just will get attributed to you based your gender. I don’t know this Bari, but it does seem to me I never hear about the males talking in a shrieking voice.”
“Do you think she’s a good politician?” Weiss asked.
“She’s not one of the all-time greats,” Carville admitted. “But the only thing that I know for a presidential campaign was that she wanted to run for president in the worst possible way and she succeeded.”
“But a lot of people run for president and don’t do very well. Biden ran for president and didn’t do very well. I mean, failure is to politics like air is to life,” he said before adding that Harris still has glowing “potential” by the media.
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