Kamala Harris is right to receive support from bad Republicans

Kamala Harris is hosting a campaign rally in Wisconsin with Liz Cheney to highlight the moral imperative of those Republicans who still value democracy and support the only pro-Democrat candidate running for president. This message is surprisingly controversial. A consensus between the right and the far left that has emerged during the Trump era is that Republicans who refuse to vote for Donald Trump are the scum of the world.

It's entirely intuitive that Trump supporters like Mollie Hemingway would shy away from leaving the “politically toxic and hateful Cheney family” or other formerly loyal Republicans. It may seem somewhat surprising that their sense of betrayal has been equaled or even surpassed from corners of the left.

The left's steady grumbling that has welcomed Republican defections since 2016 was met with a roar of outrage when no less a reactionary than Dick Cheney, the Prince of Darkness, announced his intention to vote for Harris. “It’s embarrassing to make a statement praising Dick Cheney’s support,” complained Matt Stoller. American view Editor David Dayen stated that Cheney's support would influence “zero” people. “I can't help but think that if (God forbid) Harris loses in November, it will be because she leaned too heavily on the Liz Cheneys and ignored the voters who were driven by the Cheney family and the U.S. Politics in the Middle East are most deterred,” predicts Will Bunch, columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

I would argue that Republicans have views on public policy that I disagree with and that many of them, particularly Cheney, have made the world worse and that supporting Harris will not be nearly enough to undo the damage explain what he has caused. However, I would still rather have Cheney support Harris than support Trump. And I think Harris is smart to tout that support.

At the risk of stating the obvious, which unfortunately seems necessary, the logic in garnering bipartisan support is generally to communicate your appeal to as wide a segment of voters as possible. Theoretically, it is possible that the endorsement of right-wingers like Cheney reduces the appeal of a Democrat by signaling that they would implement unpopular right-wing policies such as regressive tax cuts and the invasion of Iraq.

However, there is little evidence that this fear plays a significant role in limiting Harris' support. Harris is clearly on Trump's left when it comes to taxes, the Middle East – where Trump refuses to support even a two-state solution – and everything else, with the arguably controversial exception, depending on how you classify it , Ukraine's support towards Russia. (In my opinion, giving arms to a democratic country threatened by imperialism is liberal, and Trump's appeal to Putin's reactionary ideology is right-wing, but leftists, whose foreign policy ideology is defined in opposition to American power, tend to see it differently .)

The political objection is particularly weak given the specific nature of Republican advocates. Harris's Republican supporters generally do not claim that her policy agenda is better than Trump's. Their argument is simply that support for the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power is a threshold issue that he cannot resolve. Trump “tried to steal the last election with lies and violence to stay in power after voters rejected him,” Cheney said. “He can never be trusted with power again.”

This is not Harris' entire message. But it is part of their message and appeals to a segment of traditional Republican voters who provided a critical and potentially decisive boost that enabled Joe Biden to win in 2020.

The case that Harris has brandished or even accepted Republican support brings together several related sentiments. One viewpoint is the belief in politics as a form of purity. To accept the support of the impure is to defile oneself. Shayana Kadidal has written an entire story for The nation Denouncing “torturers for Harris.” Their argument is less that Harris' campaign is being harmed by Republican support than the idea that the support is disturbing:

The sight of [Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales]both of whom played key roles in advancing the Bush administration's torture policies, supporting Harris is repugnant. Seeing Harris accept the support of such people is even worse…

There are a whole host of other Bush Republicans for Harris. J. Michael Luttig announced in August that he would vote for Harris, apparently angry that Trump wants to “terminate” parts of our sacred Constitution – the same Michael Luttig who, as a judge, terminated numerous provisions of the Constitution in the 2005 decision that a US citizen could even be detained as an “enemy combatant” within the USA. There is also a letter signed by a veritable army of darkness – 200 people from past Republican Party administrations and campaigns, particularly notable because I have never heard of one of them (“Nobody for Harris”?) .

A related aspect is the belief that the Democratic Party has a potential majority coalition of working-class voters whose formation has been hampered by the neoliberal elite. This belief was solidified during the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016 and has persisted, even though it has become quite clear that it is fool's gold. The Biden administration followed that belief, at least specifically, by introducing anti-trade, anti-monopoly, and staunchly pro-worker policies designed to unlock the working-class support that Sanders supposedly expected during the campaign. It wasn't crazy to think that these policies could halt the Democrats' decline among the working class, but the formula failed completely.

A related aspect is skepticism about the whole idea of ​​defending liberal democratic norms. If you go far enough to the left, the normative ideas about the right way to conduct politics look very different than those on the center-left. Defending the sanctity of the electoral process, content-neutral defenses of free expression, and categorical opposition to political violence are terms that can be used against the radical left. They are naturally hesitant to allow these ideas to go unchallenged.

Clearly, the main left in American politics does not share these objections, which is why people like Bernie Sanders and AOC support Harris wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, parts of the left continue to be heavily involved in the factional struggle for control of the party. And if factionalism is your ultimate goal, actually defeating the opposing party becomes a secondary goal. In fact, shrinking your party's coalition feels like a victory, driving away your internal enemies and making it easier to take over the party. By the same logic, expanding the party toward the center by welcoming GOP refugees that help Democrats win elections feels like a defeat — the bigger the coalition, the harder it is for a small faction to to gain control over them.

I spent the Bush years not only despising the people who ran the Republican Party, but also warning (in retrospect, rightly) that it was becoming radicalized and dangerous. Donald Trump represents, in some ways, a departure from the traditions of the Republican Party (his damaged personality, his complete disregard for patriotism, and his often blatant racism). In another way, it represents a continuation of their descent into authoritarianism. I wish Republicans had recognized this trend sooner and stopped it before the party became irredeemable. But a belated conversation about the cause of democracy is better than remaining loyal to a party whose goal is to hand power to a madman.