(Bloomberg) -- Former Attorney General Eric Holder said he expects Vice President Kamala Harris to beat Donald Trump by 5 million ballots in the popular vote, though he predicted a close race because of the US electoral college system.
Speaking at the Future Resilience Forum, Holder said he was worried about a complacency that might lead the Democratic base to stay home on voting day. But he said he sees the potential for defections by Republicans to Harris’ side, especially over reproductive rights and the Project 2025 initiative.
“On the Democratic side I am concerned about a complacency — I see that starting to erode — but I’m still a concerned about that,” said Holder, who is a key surrogate for the Harris campaign. “I would be shocked if she wins by less than five million votes.”
Holder’s prediction would give Harris a slim popular-vote win in recent historical terms and put her short of Biden, who beat Trump in 2020 by more than 7 million votes overall but only narrowly beat him in a few swing states. Trump won the electoral college in 2016 but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million ballots.
Holder, who served as attorney general under Barack Obama, has called for abolishing the electoral college and picking presidents by popular vote. Harris tapped Holder and his law firm, Covington & Burling, to help her vet possible running mates before selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
Holder warned of a second Trump term after the former president retreated from the rest of the world when he was in office, saying “the wrong person to to win the election this time could plunge the world back into that doom loop.”
He said the November election offered the US a chance to “turn the page on this fecklessness once and for all” and demonstrate that Trump’s first term was an aberration and not a new normal.
Asked how Harris’ global leadership might differ from President Joe Biden’s, Holder brought up the US relationship with Israel, saying the world would still see support for Israel “but also nuances.” He suggested that support for Israel wouldn’t necessarily mean support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the same way that “Donald Trump did not represent America at its best.”
“You could separate Donald Trump from America even though he was president of the United States,” Holder said. “There’s that kind of nuance that you would see.”
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