Why Harris Is Joining Forces With the Never Trumpers

I hesitate to speak for other Never Trumpers, but we’ve gotten used to losing, haven’t we? In three consecutive presidential elections, our doughty gang of dissidents has failed spectacularly in its attempts to shake Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP. At this year’s Republican National Convention—that great festival of Trumpian celebration—Never Trump Republicanism was invisible, for the second convention in a row. Never Trump writers and pundits have frequently contributed to national media outlets (including here in The Atlantic), but in the GOP itself, the group has been derided and purged.

Now some Never Trumpers are finding a place elsewhere: Last night in Wisconsin, I was invited to moderate a discussion between the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, and her new ally Liz Cheney. The two had spent the day on a campaign tour through the so-called blue-wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Seeing them together felt surreal: As I said at the event, Harris and Cheney make an odd couple—and their alliance is a sign of a not-at-all-normal election. It also marks a crucial shift in the focus of the Democratic case. When Harris launched her campaign this summer, she leaned heavily into a message of joy and good vibes. Her vice-presidential pick, Governor Tim Walz, rose to prominence by calling the Trumpists “weird,” rather than an existential menace, as Joe Biden had argued during his campaign. But then the polls tightened, and Harris brought in Liz Cheney.

It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on how unlikely this development is. Among many Democratic voters, the name Cheney is radioactive, going back to the years of her father’s vice presidency; Liz Cheney herself spent years as a fierce right-wing ideological warrior and party loyalist, rising to the leadership ranks of the House GOP. Cheney was not an original Never Trumper. Unlike those of us who have been publicly expressing our concern since he came down the golden escalator in 2015, Cheney says she voted for Trump twice, and in Congress, she backed his administration more than 90 percent of the time. Then came January 6. Although her disillusionment with Trump had obviously been festering for some time, the insurrection led to Cheney’s full-throated denunciation. Her willingness to sacrifice her standing with the party and her seat in Congress made her a symbol of principled GOP resistance. Her role as vice chair of the Select Committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol made her the most famous Never Trumper in the country.

And there she was Monday night with a Democrat she had once denounced as a dangerous radical. The usual alignments of right and left and Democrat and Republican simply don’t apply anymore, because Donald Trump poses a unique danger to the entire American order. “We’ve never faced a threat like this before,” Cheney said, “and I think it’s so important for people to realize this republic only survives if we protect it, and that means putting partisan politics aside and standing up for the Constitution and for what’s right and loving our country.”

This is what Never Trumpers have been shouting into the GOP void for the past nine years. And in the last two weeks of the campaign, Harris and her team have decided to make it their closing argument. Although Harris now frequently refers to Trump as “an unserious man,” she also warns that the “consequences” of his return to power are “brutally serious.” Sounding that alarm also has meant reaching out to the battered remnants of the Never Trump movement. (Bulwark’s publisher, Sarah Longwell—a leading figure of the Never Trump movement—moderated the Harris-Cheney event in Pennsylvania.) Why the Never Trumpers? Because they have been making the case for years that voting against Trump isn’t a betrayal of party principles. They are particularly well positioned to argue that it isn’t necessary to embrace Democratic policies to vote for Harris, because the stakes are so much higher than mere party politics. And that’s an argument that Harris is now trying to make to swing voters. The question is, will that argument actually persuade these voters in the way Harris hopes it will?

The majority of Republican voters across the country will vote for Trump, and Cheney’s involvement is unlikely to move many of them. Harris also faces challenges in persuading conservative voters to overlook her past stances on issues such as transgender health care, the Green New Deal, and immigration. Meanwhile, the largest known group of undecideds is unsure about voting at all.

But this election could come down to a sliver of a percent, and the Harris campaign has decided to make a concerted play for disillusioned and discarded Republican voters in places like Waukesha County, where we met Monday night. In April’s GOP presidential primary, Nikki Haley won about 14 percent of the vote in Waukesha County. Some of those voters were in the audience Monday when Cheney made it clear to them that voting for a Democrat was okay because Trump should never be allowed in any office of public trust again. Perhaps her words will give a few Republican voters the cover they need to make a decision that might feel like a betrayal but is in fact an act of loyalty to country above all.

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