Elizabeth Warren proved she would rather take down Michael Bloomberg than win the presidency, according to Democratic strategist James Carville.
The CBS debate on Tuesday night featured two hours of chaotic cross-talk as candidates tried to make their final points before Saturday’s primary in South Carolina. Warren again landed punches on Bloomberg, which Carville claimed was energy wasted on the billionaire rather than carving a path toward the nomination.
“The takeaway is Elizabeth Warren hates Michael Bloomberg more than she wants to win,” Carville said during an interview with MSNBC. “I think she doesn’t want to attack Bernie because she’s scared she’ll get primaried in 2024, alright? And her attacks on Bloomberg probably help her raise money, and maybe she just genuinely dislikes him.”
He continued, “But it wasn’t to any fruition of her getting any more votes. It was maybe to stay alive a little bit longer, but I think that’s what’s at work here.”
According to the RealClearPolitics national polling averages, Bloomberg and Warren are in third and fourth place, respectively. Bernie Sanders is in the lead, with Joe Biden trailing in second place.
To Carville’s other point, Warren represents Massachusetts in the Senate and is up for reelection in 2024. Her counterpart, Sen. Ed Markey, is facing a Democratic primary challenger in Rep. Joe Kennedy. The two Democrats have a tight race, and Markey could lose his seat.
Beyond Warren, Carville noted he felt Biden had a strong night during the debate. He explained, “I thought that Joe Biden actually spoke to voters in South Carolina. I mean, you could see that he would come back to President Obama, who was obviously very popular, and that was his best performance, by far.”
Carville, who was an adviser to President Bill Clinton, ruffled some feathers in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party after he claimed Sanders’s embrace of socialism could kill the party’s chances of winning in 2020. He said, “They’ve tacked off the damn radar screen. It’s not how you become a majoritarian party.”
