Since the Democratic convention, Hillary Clinton has opened an average lead in national polls over Donald Trump of more than 5 percent, and is posting a double-digit lead over her Republican rival in a number of traditional battleground states—a lead that may to expand in light of Trump's recent refusal to soften his stance on immigration reform. But after the F.B.I. discovered 15,000 previously undisclosed e-mails and documents in their investigation into Clinton’s e-mail practices when she served as secretary of state, the presidential hopeful is fighting another wave of criticism. The latest chapter in the candidate’s enduring e-mail scandal has prompted fresh accusations that the Democratic nominee gave preferential treatment to major Clinton Foundation donors and nurtured a “pay to play” culture during her State Department tenure.

Before the fresh wave of scandal broke, James Carville, a longtime Clinton confidant and political strategist who guided Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, spoke to *Vanity Fair’*s Hive about Clinton’s chances in the 2016 presidential election and how the party of Lincoln ended up with Trump as its nominee.

The Hive: So, who is going to win the election?

James Carville: It’s hard to look at it right now and come to any other conclusion than it is going to be a pretty sizable win for the Democrats. It’s pretty hard to see anything else.

Was it ever close?

Well, I mean, the demographic changes in the country are substantial, and they are changing rapidly in a way that is unfavorable to the Republican Party. And the Republicans, I would say, continue to make a bad bet. They keep doubling down on these non-college whites. This has proven to be very successful in certain parts of the country and in off-year elections, but it has not worked very well at all in presidential years. It’s working terribly now.

Beyond those changing demographics, why is the Republican Party struggling this cycle?

Look, the last time we had a Republican president we had a disastrous war and a disastrous recession. To the extent that peace and prosperity matter to anybody—which have traditionally been the two biggest drivers in American politics—they do not bode well for the Republicans. It’s hard to expect that you are going to do very well if that’s people’s most recent memory of your party governing, in addition to being a party whose primary appeal is to the shrinking demographic that is non-college whites. In some ways it’s amazing to me that they are not doing worse. Honestly.

Trump’s hard-core supporters are not the same people who voted for Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or Jeb Bush. What’s happening to the Republican Party?

Trump came in and fit perfectly with at least half of the Republican Party, which is some version of an ethnocentric, nationalistic party that is very different from what we have traditionally seen from Republicans. And I think that as Republicans have perceived their party to be shrinking, they have hardened in their views, which is pretty damaging to their immediate-term prospects.

“Republicans are not so much worried about losing the election as they are about losing an entire generation.”

There are a lot of people in the United States that genuinely—and with some validity—think their influence is shrinking. Their lives have not turned out as they expected or hoped. If you’re a 53-year-old white guy that didn’t go to college, the chances are that you have had a pretty rough life. You have probably switched jobs any number of times, lost your health insurance any number of times, almost lost your house in the recession, and Trump comes along and says, “Of course this happened to you because of stupid politicians and immigrants.” He is appealing to people who look around, and their constant refrain is, “This is not the same country that we grew up in.” And it’s not.