I mean. It drives it home completely. Its the whole point practically. She was deeply unpopular with Republicans. So what did bringing her, and the other Republicans that the campaign chose to platform, into the tent; what did the campaign get for it?
What it shows is the level of understanding of electoralism and the electorate campaign had. Time and space are limited. Politics is a transactional game. Who does the campaign decide to platform and how? Who do they get for surrogates? What is it they are trying to gain when they do the things they do. Who is a thing working on, or at least, who is it intended to work on?
Liz Cheney. An A+ scoring “pro-life”, anti-abortion Republican was who Harris thought was one of the most important figures to dedicate substantial amounts of campaign time to. At a time when women had just seen the literal physical rights to their own body stripped away from them.
So who was “being got” by platforming Cheney?
Like I get it. You think platforming her says this thing over here. And maybe it does, it also says this thing over here. I’m putting it out there as “one more baffling and catastrophic decision”, which was a baffling and catastrophic decision at the time it was being made, and that is the rub. Harris is not a victim of circumstance. She had a 1.5 billion dollar warchest at her disposal. She spent it platforming a failed republican politician from one of the most hated political dynasties of all time.
If you can just break down further why you think the Cheney example doesn’t support, I’m interested. I have my suspicions as to why you think that, but I want to hear what you have to say first. I’m going to write my answer in a spoiler tag below, but please don’t click until you respond (or do, whatever).
spoiler
I think OP is making the same assumption that the Democrats, old school Republicans and most American political “wisdom” makes about the unimodality of political identity. Specifically, its the concept that voters exist along a single dimension of variation. Its why so much political strategy is built around going after “centrist” voters; however, I reject this alleged political wisdom because as a theory, it hasn’t predicted voter behavior. While voters might exist on a spectrum in high dimensional space, when we dimensionally reduce that we don’t end up with a smooth or continuous function, but rather a more discrete pattern emerges. There are modalities of high concentrations of voters at certain spaces [christian, gun, Texas], [lgbt, skiing, California], etc…, more like a graph model,
My argument is that the reduction of political identity to a single dimension sets you up to be unable to predict voter patterns and behavior. The thinking that voters exist primarily in one dimension is an artifact of old ways of thinking, which leads you to targeting the “center of mass” of a distribution, when actually, the distribution is multi-modal and not zero centered.
Deeply unpopular with MAGA Republicans. In the wake of the insurrection there was a real chance to pull the Republican party out of MAGA voters’ hands and they blew it.
So what did bringing her, and the other Republicans that the campaign chose to platform, into the tent; what did the campaign get for it?
I think they wanted to show that it was ok for Republican-leaning voters to abandon Trump and that they (the Harris campaign) welcomed Republicans shifting left (serving on the select committee and supporting Trump’s impeachment was certainly a shift left for an otherwise pro-MAGA politician). They clearly didn’t get anything for it.
You think platforming her says this thing over here.
No the Harris/Walz campaign thought that.
If you can just break down further why you think the Cheney example doesn’t support, I’m interested.
I don’t disagree with your overall point about platforming Cheney or the Harris campaign shifting right. I just think Cheney lost her primary because she was perceived by the MAGA voters to have shifted left on policy.
You think platforming her says this thing over here.
No the Harris/Walz campaign thought that.
No but like, you have an interpretation of what platforming her says or means. I do too. The campaign also does. So does everyone who reads it as a news headline. I wasn’t specific on what that thing was, just that, we all interpret it as saying “something”.
I mean. It drives it home completely. Its the whole point practically. She was deeply unpopular with Republicans. So what did bringing her, and the other Republicans that the campaign chose to platform, into the tent; what did the campaign get for it?
What it shows is the level of understanding of electoralism and the electorate campaign had. Time and space are limited. Politics is a transactional game. Who does the campaign decide to platform and how? Who do they get for surrogates? What is it they are trying to gain when they do the things they do. Who is a thing working on, or at least, who is it intended to work on?
Liz Cheney. An A+ scoring “pro-life”, anti-abortion Republican was who Harris thought was one of the most important figures to dedicate substantial amounts of campaign time to. At a time when women had just seen the literal physical rights to their own body stripped away from them.
So who was “being got” by platforming Cheney?
Like I get it. You think platforming her says this thing over here. And maybe it does, it also says this thing over here. I’m putting it out there as “one more baffling and catastrophic decision”, which was a baffling and catastrophic decision at the time it was being made, and that is the rub. Harris is not a victim of circumstance. She had a 1.5 billion dollar warchest at her disposal. She spent it platforming a failed republican politician from one of the most hated political dynasties of all time.
If you can just break down further why you think the Cheney example doesn’t support, I’m interested. I have my suspicions as to why you think that, but I want to hear what you have to say first. I’m going to write my answer in a spoiler tag below, but please don’t click until you respond (or do, whatever).
spoiler
I think OP is making the same assumption that the Democrats, old school Republicans and most American political “wisdom” makes about the unimodality of political identity. Specifically, its the concept that voters exist along a single dimension of variation. Its why so much political strategy is built around going after “centrist” voters; however, I reject this alleged political wisdom because as a theory, it hasn’t predicted voter behavior. While voters might exist on a spectrum in high dimensional space, when we dimensionally reduce that we don’t end up with a smooth or continuous function, but rather a more discrete pattern emerges. There are modalities of high concentrations of voters at certain spaces [christian, gun, Texas], [lgbt, skiing, California], etc…, more like a graph model,
My argument is that the reduction of political identity to a single dimension sets you up to be unable to predict voter patterns and behavior. The thinking that voters exist primarily in one dimension is an artifact of old ways of thinking, which leads you to targeting the “center of mass” of a distribution, when actually, the distribution is multi-modal and not zero centered.
Deeply unpopular with MAGA Republicans. In the wake of the insurrection there was a real chance to pull the Republican party out of MAGA voters’ hands and they blew it.
I think they wanted to show that it was ok for Republican-leaning voters to abandon Trump and that they (the Harris campaign) welcomed Republicans shifting left (serving on the select committee and supporting Trump’s impeachment was certainly a shift left for an otherwise pro-MAGA politician). They clearly didn’t get anything for it.
No the Harris/Walz campaign thought that.
I don’t disagree with your overall point about platforming Cheney or the Harris campaign shifting right. I just think Cheney lost her primary because she was perceived by the MAGA voters to have shifted left on policy.
No but like, you have an interpretation of what platforming her says or means. I do too. The campaign also does. So does everyone who reads it as a news headline. I wasn’t specific on what that thing was, just that, we all interpret it as saying “something”.