Behind the Harris Campaign’s Quest for the Mythical “Cheney Democrats”

October 4, 2024
By: Dave Zirin

Kamala Harris is trying to appeal to centrist Republicans, but what if they don’t exist? And what if the search for them leads her to abandon the Democratic base?

The Democratic consultant class—the immortal swamp things of DC—only ever seem to have one idea: pitch your campaign to the political center. In 2024, this means trying to win over what are being called “Cheney Democrats”—whatever the hell that means. This strategy apparently requires ignoring your base on domestic issues and horrifying it on foreign policy by funding Israel’s genocide. In our polarized political moment, this is electoral suicide.

The Harris-Walz ticket is running a campaign rooted in the fantasy that there is a centrist wing of the GOP appalled by Donald Trump. For this to work, Trump would need to be an outlier, and a significant section of the GOP would need to be looking for an alternative.

Those reasonable Republicans are gone, if they ever existed. Liz Cheney lost her reelection bid (against a Trumpist stooge) by 30 points, the second-greatest loss of an incumbent member of Congress in US history. The modern-day GOP base is proudly nativist and out for blood. Republican politicians aren’t offering healthcare or higher wages. They are instead spending this election season drooling for a pogrom against a small Haitian community in the Midwest. (Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, who once was roundly rebuked for praising Strom Thurmond’s segregationist campaign for the White House, isn’t punished but promoted in today’s GOP.) Republicans would sooner gargle kerosene than challenge their own racism and sexism to vote for Kamala Harris. Some of these folks may have been Obama voters, but if they haven’t already become Democrats, they certainly won’t vote for one now.

Many of the same people who shouted with joy—yes, joy!—when Biden stepped down and Harris and Walz stepped up are now recoiling. Harris needs the base to turn out, and we already know Harris is hemorrhaging votes, especially in battleground states like Michigan, by arming Israel’s genocide. Young people will stay home or vote third-party, because they are being told that there are no electoral avenues for them to change a morally abhorrent policy in the Middle East. In Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, about 35 percent of Democratic voters say they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if the person supported an arms embargo, compared to just 5 percent being less likely to vote, according to an August poll conducted by the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding. And in an October poll, among Arab Americans deemed most likely to vote, Trump is leading Harris 46 to 42.

I have no doubt the Harris-Walz team knows that it is repelling many young people and Arab American voters. And we know now that Biden says in private what so many critics have been saying in public: that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing a ceasefire and launching a regional war in part to hand Trump the presidency. And yet, a Democratic administration still arms him. Netanyahu is humiliating Biden for the world to see, and Harris won’t break from Biden’s Israel policy. Facing such an obvious sucker punch, the Harris campaign insists on sticking out its chin.

This is not incompetence. As Dan Denvir of the podcast The Dig tweeted, “What we’re seeing is not so much Democratic Party elites ignoring the anti-war demands of their constituents so much as a coordinated reaction against the party’s anti-war base. They want to silence and demobilize their base so party elites can pursue endless Israeli war abroad.”

It’s a betrayal of every person terrified of another Trump term who is working to make sure that never comes to pass. The Harris campaign is nauseating its base, because it refuses to adopt positions that could cost them those all-important votes at the Cheney compound in Wyoming or among Upper East Side fundraisers.

There is a different campaign that could have been run, a campaign that the Democratic Party may not be built for: one that broke early from Biden on Palestine, one that opposed the execution of Marcellus Williams, one that didn’t run to the right on immigration, opening the door for Trump/Vance to take the issue to an even more rabid place. It is easy to blame their campaign manager—an Uber vice president and DC technocrat, David Plouffe—for trying to robotically triangulate Harris’s positions. The campaign is clearly afraid of pissing off Zionists—of both the Jewish and Christian variety—and of raising people’s expectations with a bold economic vision. They are playing prevent defense instead of going on offense. They’re hoping that Trump will say enough crazy things and that Vance will make more people hate the sight of his face, and they’ll eke out a victory. Walz, the ex–defensive coordinator, should know that the only thing a prevent defense prevents you from doing is winning. This is a base election. And the Harris-Walz campaign feels way off base.