Jimmy Carter knows why Barack Obama was re-elected. According to the former one-term president, it wasn't Obama's first-term achievements or his limber campaign staff that secured his second victory. It was Carter's own grandson that won the election, Carter told CNN host Piers Morgan last night, after James Carter obtained the infamous video in which Mitt Romney made his 47 percent comments, which later appeared on the website of Mother Jones and sent the Romney campaign into a tailspin. Here's the new clip from Carter:
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From the transcript (bolding ours):
MORGAN: Last time we spoke, you sort of suggested you didn't have much of a relationship with President Obama. Have things improved or deteriorated, or are they about the same?
CARTER: About the same. (LAUGHTER)
You know, he and I respect each other. When he came to Atlanta this past week, his staff invited me to come to the speech. I was in Atlanta to make a speech myself. I couldn't go. But he met my grandson, who's in the state Senate. He had met my grandson, who was the one who found the 47 percent tape and pretty — (CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: Right. Well, it won him the election.
CARTER: I think — I personally think so. (LAUGHTER) But that's kind of a prejudiced —
MORGAN: But it was a key moment actually. I mean, do you think that was the pivotal moment in destroying Mitt Romney's chances.
CARTER: I believe it was. It was something that he could not deny. And it stuck with him for the rest of the election, and I think it was a major factor if not the major factor.
According to an official account written by Mother Jones editor David Corn, who published the video, Carter's grandson James, an opposition researcher, served as an intermediary between Corn and the source who filmed Romney's remarks. And while Carter's source — who, arguably, deserves far more credit than either James Carter or David Corn — has remained anonymous, earlier last night on CNN the younger Carter told Wolf Blitzer that his source wasn't one of the donors Romney was addressing that fateful night in Boca.
