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.
Sure is going to be more difficult to make progressive change in a fascist state. I’ve no doubt conservatives are going to be more open to change than their counterparts, but something tells me that those changes aren’t going to be anywhere near progressive.
Yeah, I do blame the voters who sat this election out or voted 3rd party. Absolute ignorance in the face of factual, tangible datapoints.
“Oh, the democrats should have campaigned harder! Oh, they should have been more progressive!” while conservatives just consistently lie through their teeth, skirt the law, and prey on the weak and ill-informed. While conservatives are open-faced about their regressive policies.
Change takes time, but yeah, let’s sit this one out. Real progressive. Nothing like watching the trolly going toward the wrong side of the track and saying “Oh, not my problem, I didn’t touch the lever! Whatever happens, it’s not my fault because I did nothing to help or hurt the situation! My hands are clean!”