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.

    • alcoholicorn
      1·
      2 days ago

      Lefties had nowhere else to go

      See, you’re working under the idea that everyone votes for the candidate that’s ideologically closest to them.

      By that understanding, running against the furthest-right candidate possible, and triangulating yourself to be 1 inch to the left of them should get you the entire electorate, except for the tiny percent of people who are more rightwing than Donald Trump.

      This is observably false, hence why democrats eat shit when they move to the right as they did in 2016 and 2024 (and in most midterms).

      In reality, every time you compromise a position or means-test a policy, you lose votes. “New parents will get $5,000” will always perform better than “new parents who fill out a this form and are making less than $50K and whose SSN is a prime number may be eligible for a tax break up to $5,000”

      Anybody who likes the idea of parents getting money will support the first, and anybody who opposes it will oppose both. But there’s a big chunk of people who will like the first, and won’t care about the second.

      Same reason “Free healthcare” will always perform better than “subsidies for health insurance for pell grant recipients who open a business in an minority neighborhood that operates for at least 2 years”

    • YtA4QCam2A9j7EfTgHrH@infosec.pub
      231·
      5 days ago

      So account for the people who didn’t show up. Harris lost because no one was enthusiastic about her enough to show up. Biden had millions more votes than Harris.

    • freagle@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      4·
      4 days ago

      Trump got the same votes as last time. He convinced no more people. Meanwhile Harris got 10M less votes than Biden. She lost because she couldn’t convince those 10M to vote her. When she courted Dick Cheney, it becomes obvious why. The people who would have voted for the Ds saw them correctly as now right of Reagan.