The Harris campaign’s tent may have indeed been too big.
Rolling Stone has reported that several Democratic aides warned Vice President Harris against campaigning so closely with former Representative Liz Cheney. Cheney may have voted to impeach Trump, but she’s also still the daughter of notoriously hawkish Iraq war orchestrator Dick Cheney, which most of America is far more familiar with.
“People don’t want to be in a coalition with the devil,” one anonymous campaign source told Rolling Stone in regards to Dick Cheney. But their warnings went unheeded, as a Harris staffer told them it’s not their place to question the campaign’s decisions.
The Harris campaign ran hard with Cheney in the last days of the campaign, appearing with her at rallies and on television appearances, as they urged women to vote in “secret” from the conservative men in their lives.
One Democratic strategist noted that campaigning with Cheney—and reaching out towards Republicans so enthusiastically in general—risked alienating the liberal base and wouldn’t even convince that many swing voters, if any. Donors and state party chairs also tried to convey this message to the Harris campaign, but to no avail. “We were told, basically, to get lost, no thank you,” they told Rolling Stone.
Campaigning with Cheney is just one of Harris’s many strategies that Democrats everywhere are questioning as the shock wears off.
