Did Liz Cheney Cost Kamala Harris the Election?

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Naah. But it’s certainly fun to contemplate the multiple levels of irony this implies. 

Remember when the Protection Racket Media swooned over Liz Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala Harris? It turned out that they were the only ones swooning. Democrats became horrified to find themselves tied to the “neo-cons,” while Republicans mainly scoffed. However, one particular demo that Harris and Joe Biden spent a year cultivating through an endless series of panders felt absolutely betrayed, NBC News reported yesterday.

Let’s just call it the Dearborn Demo:

“There’s been many ways in which Harris chose the path of Liz Cheney and the donor class on a range of issues, and abandoning working families in places like Dearborn, who make up the people Democrats claim to be fighting for,” said Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Layla Elabed, a Palestinian American activist and the sister of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. “And I think at the same time, Trump came in and fed a community that was grieving and in despair with lies and false promises.”

Trump ultimately ended up carrying Dearborn, a majority Arab American city in Michigan, by more than 6 percentage points — a massive swing from Biden’s nearly 40 point win there in 2020. But most Dearborn voters also voted against Trump, who got about 43% support in a deeply split field.

Huh? If you’re having trouble parsing that construct, you’re not alone. Trump won Dearborn by a plurality (42.48%) rather than a majority, with Harris getting 36.3% of the vote and Jill Stein receiving 18.4%. NBC can argue that “most Dearborn voters also voted against Trump” if one counts the 57.52% who didn’t vote for Trump as “most.” By that consideration, though, more voted “against” Harris (63.74%), and Stein got the “most” votes “against” any candidate (81.63%). Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that most of the voters in Dearborn voted “against” Stein and that more voted “against” Harris than Trump?

Has NBC News ever covered an election with more than two candidates before? Just asking.

Anyway. The point that NBC buries until the second half of the article is that the Dearborn Demo turned out … but turned out for Trump. Why? Trump actually showed up in Dearborn and talked to the Muslim leaders there, while Harris made them trek to Flint for an audience. 

NBC tries to suggest that there’s little difference between the two, but it’s actually emblematic of the Democrat Party’s entire approach in this election. Harris and Democrats demanded voters come to them, including on Harris’ nomination in the first place. No one voted to nominate her for president in any real sense; the convention never had a choice, and leaders like Biden and Nancy Pelosi installed her as the nominee without any debate or discussion. (The same is true for Biden himself before that, too.) Once the nominee, Harris repeatedly refused to come to the media, influencers, or the voters on their terms, or really even to explain her terms. All she argued was that Trump was disqualified as a Nazifasciststinkybottom and that voters had no choice but to vote for her.

All of this really explains why Harris lost — well, that and her innate incompetence and incoherence. But the Liz Cheney angle really is too delicious to dismiss entirely, especially since Rashida Tlaib’s sister in Dearborn is speaking out about it. But for the most part, the voters there just appreciated Trump’s willingness to meet them halfway:

Farah Khan, a lifelong Democrat and co-chairwoman of Michigan’s Abandon Harris campaign, said that “people wanted to hear” Trump’s pledge to “end the war” in Gaza, noting that the president-elect made a concerted effort to court the state’s pro-Palestinian community. 

“He at least, at least came and spoke to the Muslims. He heard them and said, ‘OK, I will finish. I will end the war in the Middle East,’ even if he didn’t say, you know, a genocide, but he said he will bring peace,” she said. “And that’s what the people wanted to hear, and that’s why he got the votes,” Khan reflected. …

While some Uncommitted voters left the tops of their ballots blank after voicing frustration with the Democrats, Bryarr Misner, who worked as a campaign manager for the Abandon Harris campaign in Pittsburgh, ended up voting for Trump. 

“We went through multiple avenues to try to be heard, and instead, we were ridiculed,” Misner said. 

Cheney didn’t cost Harris the election. Dearborn itself didn’t cost Harris the election, either, not even in Michigan. Trump won the state by 80,000 votes, and less than 3,000 of that lead came out of Dearborn. However, Harris used the same haughty, patronizing, and incompetent actions across the country that she put on display in Dearborn, which is why Harris lost ground in practically every county in the country. She spent the election cycle talking at people (and doing so incoherently) while Trump and his team spent the same time talking with people. Dearborn is one clear example of that difference, but it’s hardly the only one.