James Carville says President Joe Biden is the “most tragic” political figure of his lifetime, not because of his controversial pardon of his son Hunter Biden, but because Carville thinks Biden’s delayed exit from the race gave Democrats little chance of winning the 2024 presidential election.
“I actually feel for Biden, and he knows that he fucked up,” Carville said Thursday in a video for Politicon. “He wasn’t crooked, he didn’t pursue bad policies, he is the most tolerant, loving, caring, non-prejudiced person you can imagine, and this is what he’s faced with.”
Biden pledged both to run for reelection and not to interfere in his son’s felony tax and gun charges, but reversed course on both issues; he dropped out of the race in July and pardoned his son on Sunday for any crimes he may have committed between early 2014 and late 2024.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who took Biden’s place as the Democratic presidential nominee, ultimately lost the election to her GOP opponent, President-elect Donald Trump. Carville argues that Biden’s initial wavering, and the Democrats’ subsequent electoral loss, turned an otherwise admirable run into a failure.
“The most tragic figure in American politics in my lifetime is President Biden,” Carville declared.
James Carville said that Joe Biden’s tarnished legacy “is fucking self-inflicted.” Left: Raul E. Diego/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images; Right: Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
Addressing Biden’s reversal on pardoning his own son, Carville seemed relatively unbothered. “So he said, ‘I’ll never pardon the kid,’ OK … everybody’s going to do whatever they’re gonna do with their own children,” he reasoned.
“But … if he would have in September of 2023 or August said that he wasn’t going to run, goddamn we would have won this election,” Carville argued. “And it wouldn’t have been that close because we would’ve had so many talented frickin’ people that were running.”
The longtime Democratic strategist said that Biden could have left the White House “on a high note” as “the toast of Washington” with landmarks named after him, and that a future Democratic president could’ve pardoned Hunter Biden.
“What’s so sad [is], it didn’t have to be this way,” Carville added. “He brought it all on himself.”
The strategist had predicted a clear-cut win for Harris but admitted after she lost that a lack of Democratic primaries had left the party without options. Carville reiterated Thursday that he deeply respects Biden, which made the election outcome all the more devastating, he said.
“All of this is fucking self-inflicted,” he said in the video. “It’s tragic, it’s sad, and of course everything about him is… it’ll be six years before somebody comes back and talks about all of the stunning things [Biden accomplished].”
