The idea that it’s a bad thing for Liz Cheney to be on board with the Kamala Harris campaign, which is what we’re hearing from some of my fellow progressive Democrats in the here and now, reminds me why it’s hard for me to want to admit out loud that I’m a progressive Democrat.
I don’t agree on a lot of things with Liz Cheney – abortion rights come to mind right off the top.
And her father, Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of American politics, who is also supporting Harris in the 2024 race, man, where do we start with him, right?
But here’s the thing, looking at the situation in front of us: a lot of us agree that Donald Trump is a threat to the future of American democracy.
It’s good, then, against that backdrop, to get more people under the tent.
Am I wrong on this?
Apparently so.
“Another mistake that could be made in these final 4-5 weeks is if Harris is advised by her wealthy donors to shun the left and drop her more progressive positions in favor of a ‘move to the center.’ This, too, could reduce or depress the vote for Harris, especially among the base. I know many of you don’t want to hear that, but I’m just trying to warn you that the actions of party hacks and pundits have consequences.”
This was from Michael Moore, the documentary filmmaker guy, and darling of the left.
Count me among his big fans, dating back to that snarky TV show that ran as a summer replacement on NBC back in the mid-1990s.
I took the subway to Greenwich Village to watch his anti-Trump doc the day before I was to run in the 2016 New York City Marathon, when I should have been resting up in the hotel room for the 26.2-mile run early the next morning.
I love me some Michael Moore, is my point.
But I hate this sentiment from him, that reaching out to disaffected Republicans to shore up their support is somehow a zero-sum game that will result in losing progressive votes.
Maybe that’s because a good friend of mine from the Republican side of the aisle from way back in the days in politics has helped me see that Trump isn’t just a scourge to those of us on the left-of-center.
There are millions of lifelong Republicans like my friend who feel they are being held hostage same as us, who in their case just want their party back – who have different ideas than we do on how to get our country moving forward, but have nothing in common with Trump, and more to the point, the fanatics in his base who not only don’t want to see America move forward, but seem to hate America to the point that they want to burn it to the ground.
I don’t think anybody from the Republican set in the mode of Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney want or expect Kamala Harris to “move to the center” to get their votes.
Their support for Kamala Harris isn’t about policy.
It’s about being part of the coalition that will take our country back from the far right fringe that would align us with dictators, expel millions of Americans from our borders to lands they’ve never called home out of spite, weaponize the federal government to silence political dissent, subjugate women into being reproductive organs of the patriarchy, and at the risk of leaving tons of other things they want out, I’ll stop there, but you get the point.
Trump failed his way into political power in 2016 because of two things – Republicans like Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney holding their noses and voting for Trump because they didn’t see him for the danger that he was, and progressives butt-hurt over Bernie Sanders not getting the Democratic nomination either staying home or casting protest votes for Jill Stein, who we now see is a MAGA/Putin stooge.
The way I look at where we are now is, we need the center-right Republicans who want to be on our team, because as much as I feel, like Moore did in the essay that I linked above, that the election has been over for weeks now, I’m still looking at polls that tell us otherwise.
The 538 polling average has Harris up 2.6 points at this writing, and gives her a 56 percent chance of winning.
I’m old enough to remember the final 538 forecast in 2016 giving Hillary Clinton a 71.4 percent chance of winning, and we all remember how that turned out.
The stakes are what they are.
We need all hands on deck.
That said, yes, I still have strong ideas on what we need to do to move forward as a country.
Maintaining Obamacare is a priority in the here and now, but I want us to take steps toward universal healthcare; I’m fine with record domestic oil production, but we need to better incentivize clean energy, so that we can be a leader internationally in that sector; we need to pass a federal law enshrining the protections of Roe v. Wade as the law of the land; and we need to do everything we can do to help Ukraine defeat Russia and send Putin’s forces back to Moscow with the borders set the way they were before the 2022 invasion.
Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney and other Republicans for Harris may have different priorities.
We can hash those out after Kamala Harris is inaugurated.
To my fellow progressive Democrats reading this who still think there’s something wrong with partnering with center-right Republicans so that we can defeat Trumpism:
What, it’s not bad enough that you helped make it possible for Trump to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing authoritarians bent on rewriting the Constitution, now you want to join forces with the MAGAs to kill off what’s left of America?
Be careful what you wish for, is my final word to you on that.
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Chris Graham
