On Monday, vice president and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris blitzed through the Rust Belt battlegrounds with an obscure Republican former congresswoman who lost her 2022 primary in Wyoming by almost 40 points, in an effort to appeal to suburban women. It is without a doubt one of the most inexplicable stretch-run decisions I’ve ever seen from a major party nominee, and it is a sign of deep, structural delusion inside the Harris campaign and Democratic elites. In an election that looks like it might be the closest in American history, Harris cannot afford to make any more unforced errors like barnstorming with an unpopular archconservative.
To think that some significant number of voters would be persuaded by former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney is to fundamentally misunderstand the moment. For one thing, a lot of people have never heard of her, and those that have aren’t particularly enamored. An August 2022 YouGov poll found that she had net negative approval ratings, 38 percent somewhat or very unfavorable to 35 percent somewhat or very favorable, and 26 percent of voters had no opinion. The numbers were even worse with independents, presumably the target of this whole operation—by a margin of 40 percent to 25 percent, Liz Cheney was underwater with America’s critical swing bloc. And if the goal is to peel away Republican women in the suburbs, as the Harris campaign apparently believes it can do , Cheney seems like a less than an ideal vehicle for that project too, given that her approval rating with Republicans was net negative by 47 points.
Before she became the party’s most vocal elected (and then unelected) anti-Trumper, Cheney was down-the-line reactionary just like her father. She wasn’t even one of the top 50 most liberal Republicans in the House in the 116th Congress that gave Trump all his signature legislative victories. And the House GOP is very conservative. And if the move here is to appeal to suburban women who are angry about the Dobbs Supreme Court abortion ruling and the loss of control over their bodily autonomy, Cheney is an even weirder choice. She has an A rating from the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life American organization and an unbroken, lifelong record of hostility to reproductive rights…