Democratic strategist James Carville said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” that Vice President Kamala Harris was “not close” to beating former President Donald Trump in November.

Guest host Michael Steele said, “I want to touch on a little bit of the noise he made earlier this week, which I personally appreciated and wanted to make sure people understood what I thought of what you said, when you caution folks. All the exuberance and all the excitement we are seeing right now in the campaign is good, it’s healthy, it is important, particularly given the campaign for Joe Biden was. Your point is don’t let that exuberance cloud you to the reality. You still have a race to run here. Republicans are going to gird themselves and they are going to come out it hard, and so, take that enthusiasm and make sure it is channeled through infrastructure on the ground. I will let you speak to some of what you said there.”

Carville said, “Thank you, Sir because you said exactly what I was trying to say, and you said it better than me. And people would be wise to listen to Dave Wasserman, who you just had on, who is a very wise man, who said if we need to win this thing, we have to win by two. Some people say maybe we even need to win by three, and we are not close to being there yet. We need to keep our heads down. We need to have a good convention in Chicago. We need to go out campaigning and we need to launch attacks. We’ve got to go here. We’ve got to hit them hard. I think that the early signs are encouraging. I’m not going to be. I don’t want to be a downer here, but we have to be realistic. And you and I are a little older. We know a lot about what politics is, and we know someone about what motivates different people in this country.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN