With Labor Day in the rear-view mirror, the 2024 election cycle is sure to heat up, and campaign-related announcements are sure to be a frequent occurrence. Some will be meaningful. Others will have zero value.
Clearly falling into the latter was former Congresswoman Liz Cheney’s endorsement of the Democratic Party’s installed designee, Vice President Kamala Harris. Cheney did not join Harris or her team on a stage or take in the adulation of a raucous crowd living on joy and vibes at a campaign rally. Instead, Cheney’s endorsement came at a very low-key event hosted by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.
Cheney’s endorsement comes as no surprise to political observers, given her stewardship of the January 6th Select Committee and her outspoken animus towards her own party’s duly elected nominee, former President Donald Trump:
“As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Cheney said.
The endorsement represents a complete 180-degree turnaround for Cheney, who is on record in tweets calling Harris a “radical liberal” whose positions are to the left of the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who would “recreate America in the image of what’s happening on the streets of Portland & Seattle” during the so-called “Summer of Love” from 2020. Cheney repeats those sentiments in a Fox News that has recently re-surfaced since Cheney’s endorsement:
Notice how Cheney framed her endorsement. She did not laud Harris’s abilities to govern. She did not endorse Harris’s policy positions or plans (probably because the Harris campaign has largely communicated in platitudes.) She certainly did not endorse Harris’s values, which she claimed in a CNN interview with Dana Bash have not changed, despite her shifting her positions based upon the political winds of the say. The political hypocrisy is palpable.
Cheney’s endorsement is mere the furtherance of her vendetta against Trump. A vendetta which started from opportunism after January 6, 2021. A vendetta which grew after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi handpicked Cheney to serve on that kangaroo court that was the January 6th Select Committee. And a vendetta that rendered Cheney a political afterthought when she was soundly defeated in the 2022 Republic primary by her successor Harriet Hageman.
Cheney’s endorsement mirrors much of the 2020 strategy which resulted in President Joe Biden’s election: don’t vote for Harris, vote against Trump. It’s Cheney’s wishy-washy way of feigning her conservative bona fides while jumping ship from a Republican party that has cast her aside in favor of more credible, good-faith conservatives like Hageman.
One would be hard pressed to find a better example of a politician being a “Republican in Name Only,” a term reserves for the old guard of the Republican Party whose moment passed the moment Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016.
Apparently, Cheney seems to believe that her endorsement, such that it is in her diminished capacity within her own party, holds value for the Harris team in bringing in cross-over votes. But the political reality of her situation would tend to indicate this to be nothing more than vanity. In August of 2022, polling found that 2 out of every 3 Republicans held a negative view of Cheney. Other polling from around the same time found that 3 in 5 Democrats favorably viewed Cheney.
That translates into very little needle movement in favor of Harris. Essentially, Cheney’s endorsement is merely preaching to the choir.
Chalk up Cheney’s endorsement to the political equivalent of the shocking news that water is wet, and that the sky is blue. It’s political narcissism; an attempt at relevancy in a news cycle dominated by the election. If Cheney’s opinion had value, the Harris campaign would have Liz Cheney thrust into the national spotlight. Instead, Cheney is relegated to a policy forum, earning coverage from confirmation biased media making more of her statement than its actual weight.
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Gene Berardelli is a street-smart New York-based trial attorney with a successful track record representing conservative candidates and a solid reputation as an award-winning podcaster and as the award-winning author of the Amazon bestseller Schnooks, Crooks, Liars & Scoundrels: A Field Guide to Identifying Political Buffoons. He currently hosts Buffoon of the Week! on YouTube and Rumble, featuring daily original content which seek to find the dumbest political newsmakers each week.
