Democrats Begged Team Kamala Harris Not to Campaign With Liz Cheney
Democrats Begged Team Kamala Harris Not to Campaign With Liz Cheney
Democratic operatives say they told the Harris campaign appealing to Republicans wouldn’t win her votes — and could turn off disaffected Democrats.
It's literally 2016 but worse somehow.
One source close to the Harris campaign tells Rolling Stone they reached out to several staffers in and around the campaign to voice concerns about the candidate embracing Dick and Liz Cheney.
“People don’t want to be in a coalition with the devil,” says the source, speaking about Dick Cheney. They say a Harris staffer responded that it was not the staff’s role to challenge the campaign’s decisions.
A Democratic strategist says they warned key Harris surrogates and top-level officials at the Democratic National Committee that campaigning with Liz Cheney — and making the campaign’s closing argument about how many Republicans were supporting Harris — was highly unlikely to motivate any new swing voters, and risked dissuading already-despondent, infrequent Democratic voters who had supported Biden in 2020. The strategist says they also attempted to have big donors and battleground state party chairs convey the same argument to the Harris campaign.
Another Democratic operative close to Harrisworld says they sent memos and data to Harris campaign staffers underscoring how, among other things, Republican voters, believe it or not, vote Republican — and that the data over the past year screamed that Democrats instead needed to reassure and energize the liberal base and Dem-leaning working class in battleground states. “We were told, basically, to get lost, no thank you,” says the operative.
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Let’s see, so we’re blaming Biden for stepping aside too late, his advisors for not encouraging him to step aside, the DNC for not holding a second primary, and Harris for trying to get voters by reaching across the aisle.
Let’s for once try Occam’s Razor.
Can we just accept that more than half the
nation isvoters are racist, sexist, and bigoted, or at a minimum comfortable supporting racism, sexism, and bigotry? Because that’s the simplest explanation.Tammy Baldwin, Elissa Slotkin, and Jacky Rosen are all women who won senate races in states Kamala lost (WI, MI, NV). There's also Ruben Gallego, a Hispanic man who's winning in Arizona. So your "simplest explanation" is that these sexist, racist bigots were fine with voting for women (one of them a queer woman at that) and minorities for senate but not for president (for some reason) as opposed to the idea that Kamala Harris was just an unpopular candidate. That's not the simplest explanation, it's just the laziest.
Occam's razor isn't "the simplest, most reductive answer is usually right" it's "entities must not be created beyond nessecity". It argues that when you have two hypotheses which have equal explanatory power, you should usually choose the one that has fewer elements (assumptions, new rules). The classic example is a heliocentric solar system vs a geocentric one. Geocentric needs very complex laws of motion to get the sidereal motion correct, heliocentric doesn't.
"everyone is racist" doesn't have the same explanatory power as the detailed analysis you're seeing journalists and your fellow lemmy users construct of Biden, Harris, and the Democratic establishments failure to recognize the need for loud populist messaging and unforced errors depressing voter enthusiasm, therefore we cannot apply Occam's razor to the situation.
That's the explanation that requires zero introspection and change on behalf of the Democratic party. Democrats need to learn something here. Democrats need to finally implement that change obama promised all those years ago.
Unless their purpose is to lose.
Donald Trump got approximately the same number of votes as he did in 2020. Harris, however, got about 11 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020.
I feel like Occam's razor points to a DNC that hates voters, as exemplified by your comment and there not being a fair DNC primary to actually select the most popular candidate for 8 years, and voters responding in kind.
If there had been a primary, it's possible that Sanders would've gotten nominated. The DNC can't risk that.
There was a primary for the 2024 election. Biden won.
There was literally only one serious opponent, and his name was Dean Phillips. He couldn't get ballot access in all 50 states, and the Democrats drove him out of politics afterward.
No one ran because they knew they'd get excommunicated from the party if they ran against st Biden.
Yeah, that's exactly what they did to Phillips. I don't even like his politics, he's a neoliberal centrist, but he was worried about Biden's electability and his entire platform was, "I think there should be a real primary, will other people please run too?" They forced him to step down from his leadership positions and suddenly he had a primary challenger for his seat. He decided he's going to retire from politics when his term is finished.
"You had a primary and Biden won so he appointed Harris!"
- Only Phillips had any shot above 0.1%
- Forbidden from running on most ballots
- Primary called before all 50 states had a shot
- Phillips who ran was effectively blacklisted from working with them ever again
- Biden wins
- Phillips got so much flack for "I don't want Trump to win" he is forced to leave office
- Biden still is a fight of "Who can be the oldest white dude in office?"
- Biden fucks up
- Biden gives up
- "Uhhh Harris is it now, the Silent Generation Dems said so"
It's an AR-16 to the foot and every time we try to attempt triage, they load a new magazine saying we're the idiots for trying to stop the bleeding.
It isn't hard to win when you're the only one running.
Harris vs An Empty Chair
LoL the empty chair got some delegates?
There was not a primary.
JLawOK.gif
I think the real answer is all of the above. Biden waited too long to drop out, which didn't give enough time to properly hold a primary. This resulted in Harris being nominated with no way to gauge how popular she would be. She then ran a terrible campaign spending too much time courting moderate Republicans. This resulted in progressives being disillusioned and not voting. Her stance on Israel and Gaza turned away Arab voters who also didn't vote. All of this combined together to pave the way for a second Trump presidency.
No primary also means they can't test what ideas are popular.
Why would they want to do that when they don't give a shit if it's popular
no way to gauge how popular she would be
Her approval ratings have always been trash. We were well versed in who she would be.
She actually went to the primary on a decently progressive platform (for a Democrat). Then she ran for president as center right standard Democrat.
That interview where they asked her what would be different if she won versus Biden, and she said she couldn't think of a thing. That fucking ruined her.
Not a thing will change. Not a single change. Nobody thought to coach her on the most obvious question to ask or they told her the winning line was to stick with the guy who had to drop out?
I'm so fucking sad and sick. Arm yourselves before it's too late.
I wouldn't put it past day one dictator and project 2025 that he's never heard of to immediately put a stop to weapons sold to anyone that doesn't qualify.
Nothing will fundamentally change... again.
Agent Orange appointed three Supreme Court justices who rolled back women's rights and made the President completely above the law. This is just one of the things that fundamentally changed. This time around I expect Thomas and Alito to retire so he can replace them with younger Christian fascists. If you have children, their children will be affected negatively by this court.
This is just one thing! So many things fundamentally changed. If you think nothing fundamentally changed for you then that's your privilege showing.
I've been armed and fully trained for a number of years, they won't put a restriction on sale of weapons, That might be viewed as a constitutional violation. What they will do is put a restriction on the sale of ammunition. Or there will be extreme 'shortages'
Damn, literally the chris rock antigun strategy.
In character for the USA though. Freedom! (if you are rich).
I like (hate) the way you think.
It certainly played a part, but no; half the nation isn't racist/sexist. A little over half the country voted. Of that, some portion of the people wanted Trump for non-sexist/racist reasons. They still might not be good reasons, just not that always. It's way less than half of the nation who voted for Trump, and significantly fewer who did it for racist/sexist reasons.
We have to deal with that issue in the US, and many others, but boiling it down to just that is wrong. It also pushes a narrative that we must not run people of color or women in the future, which I believe to be wrong.
We need to inspire people. That's where this campaign failed. It was almost entirely based on fear. This works much better for Republicans than Democrats. The Democrats thought they could win playing the Republican's game. They should have played their own.
We need to inspire people.
This. Exactly this. Non-conservatives haven't had anyone to vote for for years, only people to vote against. Biden was anyone other than Trump. They thought that would work for Kamala, but here we are.
Related, when I tried to volunteer for the dems, all they wanted to do was have me make phone calls. I think in got an invite to knock doors like 2 days before the election. I tried to contact people several times to see how I could help energize the base or make sure people were registered and ready to vote. They kept asking me to make calls and send money. Now people like me are going to be directly hurt by these policies, the only question is how much.
They should have played their own.
I really don't think "it's her turn" 2.0 would have been a good idea.
Of that, some portion of the people wanted Trump for non-sexist/racist reasons.
They knew Trump's sexist and racist policies and still voted for him. That means they support those racist and sexist policies.
I won't excuse people for voting for a tyrant who explicitly told everyone he'd be a tyrant.
Funnily enough the very same argument also can be used for Harris and genocide, immgirant oppression, warmongering and everything else here.
No, it can't. This isn't an issue of policy disagreement. This is an issue on ideology. Harris isn't a fascist tyrant who promised to destroy our democracy.
No it doesn't. I voted for Harris despite wanting her to say she'd do more for Palestinians. Voting isn't an endorsement, and people need to stop pretending it is. There's perfectly valid reasons (that I don't agree with) that aren't racist/sexist that led to people voting for Trump.
I'm not asking you to excuse anyone. They did what they did. It doesn't deserve an excuse. I'm asking for people to recognize real issues that can be worked on, instead of just throwing our hands up and saying it wasn't because of real mistakes. Blaming sexism and racism is a cop-out. It doesn't fix anything and only blames the failure as a failure of others, not yourself.
It wasn't more than half the country, in total 65% of the country voted for any candidate. Trump got about 55% of that, or a bit over 36% of the country. That's still way higher than it should be, but well below half. There's a bunch of possible explanations for why the remaining 35% of the country didn't vote, and only some of those explanations would be tacit support of Trump.
The 35% of the country did vote. If you choose not to vote for any candidate, you are voting, "both these options are indistinguishable to me, I'm good with either." Not voting is still voting. You're just endorsing whatever the people who do vote decide. You're basically saying, "I consider this race irrelevant and don't care about the outcome." That is what you are voting for if you don't vote.
Good point. More than half of voters would have been accurate.
That reduces the sting of disappointment in my fellow man a tiny bit.
Yes, but there was unlikely to be 100% turnout of horrible people. Some good people voted for Trump, in what we see as misguided but tolerant of racism. However many more racist people stayed home and didn't vote and many more didn't care about racism enough to vote.
Trump in the USA and people's response to covid (worldwide) really highlighted selfishness of humanity to me. I'm a less hopeful person because of it but that doesn't mean I won't fight for what's right.
So you’ve got 4 issues all resolving to personal issues from the Democratic Party, a very simple explanation that they lost due to their own inner problems, and you occams razor to “it’s just *ism”?
Why is self reflection so hard for Dems.
"It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It"
Insert Principle Skinner meme about how it is the voters who are wrong
You’re so consistently wrong that I’m starting to think you might be Will Stancil’s alt account.
Because that’s the simplest explanation
No, it's even simpler than that. The majority don't pay attention to anything past headlines. There are numerous reasons for this, time, effort, working 3 jobs to make ends meet, etc. And that's something the Republicans excel at, they have spent the past 60 years developing an entire network of media to spread their propaganda masking it as factual "news".
Because people aren't looking past the headlines... if you break that down and simplify why that is , you get to the base of the average person having a hard time in the current economy. One party telling them that it is hard and they'll change things, and the other party telling them it's not actually that bad. If you're having a hard time and one group keeps insisting that you're really not, you're probably going to pick the other side if those are the only options. It's not rocket science, fuck, it's not even political science, it's just ignoring the issue and trying to convince someone being beaten to death by the system that they're not actually getting beaten.
But actually committing to do something substantially FDRish for the working man isn't an easy sell within high level Democrat party leadership. I don't know why this is true exactly but I expect it has to do with money and power.
I expect it has to do with money and power.
Are we completely ignoring the right wing echo chamber on social media and cable news? I've encountered no shortage of people who have been completely sucked into that world and buy into the bullshit. Not all of them are innately evil, but their candidate of choice certainly is
Democrats certainly like the "America is racist" narrative because it gives them justification for chasing the racist vote next time.
The democrats eagerness to support genocide is obvious. Though unfortunately for them, support for genocide isn't a key differentiator when it comes to winning elections.
And the other half is just as racist, sexist and bigoted. But they're covert at it.
“Just as” is absurd, but I agree there is some. I was guilty of plenty of microaggressions before I knew of them. Change starts with the youth. The older you get, the longer it takes to get to you.
Democrats don't have to say any slurs to uphold a racist/sexist system. Send out a memo condemning racism while increasing police funding and surveillance. Tokenize people in their cabinet with a smile and a hashtag while bombing, destabilizing, and plundering the global south. Our hierarchical and white supremacist systems are so embedded in our society, it's assumed to be the natural order of things.