Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville said Thursday that President-elect Donald Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in November with messaging on the top issue for voters: The economy. 

"We lost for one very simple reason: It was, it is and it always will be the economy, stupid," Carville wrote in an op-ed posted in The New York Times. "We have to begin 2025 with that truth as our political north star and not get distracted by anything else."

If Democrats want to win elections, they'll have to win over voters on the economy, Carville said. 

"Mr. Trump, for the first time in his political career, decisively won by seizing a swath of middle-class and low-income voters focused on the economy," he wrote. "Democrats have flat-out lost the economic narrative. The only path to electoral salvation is to take it back."