Liz Cheney Was an Electoral Fiasco for Kamala Harris

[Cattledog]

The Cheney strategy was an abject failure that added few if any votes to the Democratic total, alienated voters, and stole precious time from an agonizingly short campaign schedule.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/liz-cheney-electoral-fiasco-kamala-harris/

[msongs]

1. perhaps an overbalance on that issue as well as too much on trump being a whack job which was already known nt

[spooky3]

2. totally disagree nt

[live love laugh]

26. At this point they're just making shit up.

[Initech]

34. They've been making shit up since the golden escalator.

[WarGamer]

3. agreed 100%

it was a stupid move... which I pointed out here repeatedly.

[dpibel]

37. How do you stand being so. damned. right??

What a burden.

[Self Esteem]

4. That's a bit harsh. I don't think it helped but I don't think it alienated too many voters.

[Scrivener7]

5. .

[cloudbase]

6. As Lyndon Johnson said,

“Better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”

[Elessar Zappa]

7. I doubt Liz Cheney had anything to do with our loss.

[Jit423]

21. I don't even like Liz Cheney but I admire her courage and appreciate her fighting for the Constitution.

She did more than many of us did for this election.

[BlueTsunami2018]

8. 100%

We should have said “Thanks and all but fuck off Dick Cheney, you war criminal asshole!”

These people are not our friends. They never were, they never will be.

[TheKentuckian]

9. I don't even understand. The mission was so simple.

Vote Harris.

Motherfuckers are so far beyond fucking stupid, that light will take a billion years to reach whatever retrograde location of idiocy they reside in.

[The Wandering Harper]

10. I found a few things about her campaign alienating

but it seemed pointless and/or divisive to bring up so close to the election

[SoFlaBro]

15. Nothing Harris' campaign did outweighed a goddamn thing that Orange Bastard said and did.

[The Wandering Harper]

20. it is possible to hold two thoughts at once

Prior to the convention I was enthused AF.
I found the convention, and her campaign going forward
alienating and a little disturbing.
But still I filled her bubble

[ClimateHawk]

28. Just curious

What did you find alienating and disturbing about Kamala's campaign after the convention?

[The Wandering Harper]

31. thank you for asking. It was mostly the convention that turned me off

I didn't follow her campaign as closely after the convention as I did before.
I don't remember his exact words but the way the billionaire governor introduced himself,
and the enthusiasm of the cheering in response, turned my stomach.
As a poor person who's had a visceral fear of cops all their life
it was not reassuring to see a uniformed police officer speak at the convention.
Oprah, another billionaire.
The convention overall was glitz and hype to me

[ClimateHawk]

39. Fair enough

I’m not crazy about Oprah either. After all she brought us Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz.

[The Wandering Harper]

42. Right? I was like "wtff were they thinking with Oprah?"

after she spotlighted a guy who went tried to erode Democratic influence in senate

[The Wandering Harper]

32. first thing that comes to mind about the post-convention campaign

I wondered if support from disgusted republicans would leave her feeling some kind of obligation to entertain some of their policies

[Raven123]

11. I think it was a waste of precious time appearing with Cheney

Infuriated those party-first people. I had no problem with her appearing at the convention, but it should have ended there. The “permission structure” stuff was nonsense. The voting booth is private. No one needed permission to vote their conscience and appearing with Liz didn’t endow anyone with that feature.

[TheKentuckian]

14. Who fucking cares? Vote for Democrats.

Chump isn't the only narcissistic player character minded person.

Vanity over country and over people, real people with a doubleplusgood portion of weapons grade stupidity.

[JI7]

17. What a fucking joke. How the fuck do you lose "party first" people

because she campaigned with liz Cheney. How the fuck are they party first ?

[Raven123]

23. Maybe I wasn't clear

I think some ( a lot of) GOPers are party-first. Campaigning with Cheney wasn’t going to convince them to vote for Harris

[GenThePerservering]

12. Guess we're at the granular stage

of the postmortem - hair splitting comes next.

[hlthe2b]

13. Meh. I don't think there is good data to support such hyperbole. At some point the finger-pointing will become so

agressive that some are going to lose their fingers.

[JI7]

16. White women was one group where Harris did not lose support from previous elections

unless you are saying she lost latino men becsuse of Liz Cheney.

[spooky3]

44. Not compared to Biden, but Harris lost some support

Compared to Clinton (add usual caveat about this year’s exit polls). The Pew validated voter studies re: 2016 and 2020 are better than exit polls, but they won’t be completed for 2024 for at least another year.

[kentuck]

18. I was guilty of giving her more credibility with Republican voters than she showed.

I thought she might actually make the difference in the race. But Republicans mostly ignored her and voted for the convicted felon.

[JI7]

19. Why did Tester lose in Montana ? The nation is another grift

[hawkeye21]

22. If that's true, that reaction to Cheney is as stupid as supporting Trump

When the opposition joins your side, that's always a good thing . . . except, apparently, some people think it isn't. But why not?

Having lifetime conservatives, leaders of the GOP, publicly supporting the Democrats because the Dems are honest and decent while the MAGAs are depraved and dicatatorial is bad? That's a crazy response. Period. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a lunatic too. IMHO, of course.

[alarimer]

24. I thought it was stupid

Nobody likes any of the Cheneys. Most registered R's just held their noses and voted for Trump anyway.

[grobertj]

25. She supported Allred and see what good that did

[artemisia1]

27. No: this is entirely on the voters who saw Trump as a Savior figure (saving them from the responsibility of decency) /nt

[Raine]

29. Totally agree nt

[jalan48]

30. Identify Politics fail. Republican women didn't cross over for Harris because of Liz Cheney.

How long will we continue with these failed political strategies?

[BannonsLiver]

33. Didn't have a thing to do with the outcome.

[obnoxiousdrunk]

35. Liz had

nothing to do with what happened.

[tman]

36. I cringed all the way through it. But I thought...

maybe the campaign know something I don't know.

[Yavin4]

38. For decades now, pundits on the TV have scolded Democrats to reach out to Republicans.

She did, and this is the end result.

[mvd]

40. A little was ok just to thank her

But not that much time was needed IMO. Our base should be the bigger focus.

[H2O Man]

41. Recommended.

I understood having Liz on stage. I disagree with her on everything policy-wise, but she did a good job on the J6C. I found it far, far more offensive to have that war criminal Dick Cheney on stage. A lot of people I know were unhappy with that. I mean, where do you stop? If Idi Amin was above soil and endorsed the Democrat, would that be a good thing?

[notroot]

43. Not wrong. Not right. IMO.

The Democratic and Republican Parties are both on a knife's edge.

Democrats could win on policy if voting was mandatory, like Australia.

But, it's not. Hence, Republicans win, usually without winning the popular vote.

This time, they DID win the popular vote, and that tells us something.

It tells us that the majority of Americans are garbage people -- sexist and racist scum, undeserving of our respect.

Which means we're in deep trouble. We need to focus on social change, and not political change, if we ever hope to defeat the lying, cheating scum in the Republican Party.

Political change follows social change, not the other way around.

Republicans grokked this, where we failed to. They changed society, and won politics in the long-run.

If we want to win elections, we have to focus on changing hearts and minds.

[Wingus Dingus]

45. Pfffft.

[mathematic]

46. Oh, has The Nation backed off their anti-NATO, pro Russian "peace" stance yet?

The publication is manifestly bad at explaining the way the world is and articulating a vision consistent with the values of America.

So don't bother to take this ticky-tack criticism of attributing Harris' loss to campaign appearances with Cheney in the midwest seriously. They even set up some beautiful strawmen to knock down:
1) The strategy was to win conservatives and republicans (it was to win moderates and independents, which did happen btw)
2) The strategy was to de-emphasized campaigning with "working class" figures (Sanders and Fain did many campaign stops)

The truth is that the Democrats have always tried to run "big tent" campaigns. It's what you do when you believe your polices are in the best interest of everybody. The Nation wants to make the tent smaller. They want it so small they can capture it. They want to be the leftist version of the Tea Party that captured the Republicans and birthed MAGA.