That sound you hear is hell freezing over
When Liz Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris earlier this week, it was a big deal, but not unexpected. It did, however, raise an interesting question. When I heard the news, I thought “What’s Dick going to do?” I’m sure others had the same thought. Sure enough, now we have our answer, and it’s historically significant. But will it be electorally significant?
If you’d told me that Dick Cheney and I would someday be voting for the same presidential candidate, I’d have assumed it meant that one of us was someday going to end up having a psychotic break. But here we are, with Dick Cheney endorsing my candidate, Kamala Harris. It’s not that the famously neoconservative Dick Cheney has somehow become more moderate. Rather it’s that his Republican Party has indeed had a psychotic break.
So where does this get us? When the news broke yesterday, I wanted to take a day before forming an opinion about its electoral significance. Sometimes unexpected political news can initially feel like it’s going to have a different impact than it’s really going to have, if only because of the initial shock value. As I often like to say, a lot of times in politics, the “biggest” stories end up adding up to nothing.
But I think this is different. It’s one thing for Dick Cheney’s daughter to endorse the Democratic Party candidate for President. Liz Cheney is a conservative, but she’s spent years showing herself to be pragmatic and bipartisan. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, is the uncompromising conservative extremist who was to the right of George W. Bush. As far as we all know, Dick Cheney is every bit as much of a conservative extremist as ever. And yet he’s endorsing the Democratic candidate.
Dick Cheney is also from a different generation. He’s the last remaining major voice from the pre-Trump Republican era (except for George W. Bush, who refuses to say anything partisan these days). There are Trump-haters in the Republican Party who voted for a ticket with Cheney on it the last time they voted. And now Dick Cheney himself is telling those Republicans to vote for the Democratic candidate.
Let’s keep in mind that when Donald Trump still had Republican primary challengers in 2024, he was still barely getting of the Republican vote in each primary state. Even once he was running unopposed, 15% of Republican primary voters were still finding a way to cast votes against him. Anti-Trump Republican voters are a bigger group than the media on either side likes to acknowledge. And now Dick Cheney, one of their patron saints, just told them to play for the other team in 2024.
We’ll see what happens with this. But it feels like it’s an impactful story. Even if it only moves the needle by let’s say 1%, that would be enough to change the outcome in any swing state where Kamala Harris is currently on track to lose by less than 1%. So let’s take it as a win and keep on building. You’re still welcome to despise Dick Cheney as much as ever, if you like. But we’ll take his help nonetheless.
