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.

      • YtA4QCam2A9j7EfTgHrH@infosec.pub
        211·
        13 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.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
        1·
        10 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”

    • LurkyLoo@lemmy.world
      1051·
      13 days ago

      Hahahaha…oh wait you’re serious…BAHAHAHA. Harris didn’t run as a Republican and you know it. And no permutation close to it either. And either you know it or you didn’t actually pay any attention beyond “I saw her on the same stage as Liz Cheney so they must be pulling right”. If you had paid any attention you would see that those last minute inclusions of Republicans was around the threat Trump posed to the country. They got up on stage and literally said that they didn’t agree on most positions, but that the need to keep trump out of office overshadowed party alliance.

      And given all that if you were actually progressive (and you know wanting to make progress) and being realistic you would look at the actual options and have seen which was as close as you could get to your preference and votes to move the needle in the right direction. Enough people didn’t do that (or didn’t agree with what I assume are our positions and preferences…very to the left of Trump for myself and presumably many others here) that we ended up with this mess.

      There is plenty to learn but “HaRiS RaN As A RePuBlIcAn” is not one of them.

      • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
        422·
        13 days ago

        Maybe you were born yesterday, but I’ve been politically aware since the beginning of the neoliberal era. I remember Reagan & Thatcher, and I remember Bill Clinton’s triangulation and every rightward lurch the Democratic party has made since.

        • GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml
          4·
          12 days ago

          Scooby Doo style:
          The boogeyman is a centrist who is neither left, nor right!

          Pull mask off

          oh it was a right-winger all along.

      • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
        331·
        13 days ago

        She fucked up. I thought oh shit she might be listening to Bernie when she picked Walz. Then she never looked left for another moment. She played center right and tried to, in the words of another comment, “scrape shit off a fascist’s boot”. I voted for her, harm reduction etc.

        They fucking blew it. If we ever have a real presidential election again they better run progressive hard.

      • YtA4QCam2A9j7EfTgHrH@infosec.pub
        343·
        13 days ago

        I voted for her. I’m just dxing the problem, which is enthusiasm. Stop apologizing for their shitty campaign. They should have continued to attack Trump and co a weird. Keep Walz at the front of the campaign. And run on ending the Genocide and improving people’s lives.

        I felt my enthusiasm drop for Harris every time she made it clear that she didn’t give a damn about progressives. I still voted, but it is obvious that the electorate didn’t buy her bipartisan and it in fact depresses the electorate. The results speak for themselves.