Former lead strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign James Carville updated his famous campaign strategy of running on the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid,” to “It’s the pandemic, stupid,” for the 2020 election cycle on Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Beat.”
Melber said, “I’m curious as a strategist what you think about these numbers. The Biden activity since the convention, they’ve got a lot of public campaigning. But you’re going to see in this chart quite a bit of time spent virtual campaigning initially. Now they’re back out on the road more. And then you got a bunch of days where you got no public events whatsoever. Is this the right move? What do you say, James, to some Democrats who think that the Biden campaign is starting to act like a Rose Garden strategy without having a Rose Garden yet?”
Carville said, “It’s the pandemic, stupid. He respects other people’s health, and he respects his own health. And by the way, people can’t stop throwing money at him. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Melber said, “In ’92 it was, ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ You’re going with this year, ‘It’s the pandemic, stupid’?”
Carville said, “Exactly. That’s big. That’s a huge part of it. Everybody in the world is aware of it. And I think people respect that about him.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN