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.

  • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ
    3·
    3 days ago

    the real answer shines through when you step outside of US politics. The global recession had people in every country questioning the incumbent party. It doesn’t matter if it was left or right, conservative or liberal, whoever was in office was being blamed - because the public in general has no idea how the world works and has the collective memory of a goldfish. The US is performing better than most countries [1][2][3][4][5] in regards to the impact covid-19 had on the world, but Americans are too uneducated to realize they had it good, as the road to recovery is never easy.

    With the public angry at the incumbent government (globally, not just in the US), the Trump/Putin hate machine decided to to stoke fear, uncertainty and doubt in Americans. This clearly worked as people’s views on the nations economy have been trending down [6], so now we’re left to deal with the Magagenda, which all seem to align with everything Putin ever hoped for.

    You would think people would learn that republicans tend to wreck the economy just for democrats to fix it, and republicans to shit all over any progress that’s been made again, but just like dogs aren’t smart enough to learn that a snake bite’s venomous bite could kill them an hour later, Americans can’t seem to grasp the concept of economic momentum and that changes made in one term may not be immediately fixed - especially if the previous guy smeared his shit all over the bathroom walls before he left. It’s understandable it will take some time to clean up.

    Anyways, Trump took advantage of these economic hard times by stoking fear and hatred with claims that the incumbent party is to blame, that it’s all corrupt, and somehow immigrants and trans people are to blame.

    In summary, we’ve got a known rapist/conman/cheater with a history of rape, conning, and cheating and we’re supposed to believe he won fair and square? I don’t buy it.

    [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68203820

    [2] https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-us-economic-recovery-in-international-context-2023

    [3] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-recovery-from-covid-19-in-international-comparison/

    [4] https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-us-economy-in-global-context

    [5] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/despite-global-inflation-the-u-s-economic-recovery-is-among-the-strongest-of-g-7-nations/

    [6] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/23/views-of-the-nations-economy-may-2024/

    • 4grams@awful.systemsEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      friend, you and I are saying the same thing.

      You would think people would learn that republicans tend to wreck the economy just for democrats to fix it, and republicans to shit all over any progress that’s been made again, but just like dogs aren’t smart enough to learn that a snake bite’s venomous bite could kill them an hour later, Americans can’t seem to grasp the concept of economic momentum and that changes made in one term may not be immediately fixed - especially if the previous guy smeared his shit all over the bathroom walls before he left. It’s understandable it will take some time to clean up.

      I totally understand why it happened, and yeah, I agree it was economic issues, and inflation and so forth. And I even agree it’s not an America thing. This is just a human thing, and humans by and large are kinda awful.

      this is because people want easy, quick answers that make them feel good. An old comment of mine from this site sums it up:

      as I have climbed higher in the corporate world, this is becoming clearer and clearer. people respond far better to a confident idiot than they do a pensive expert.