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this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Do it Liz! It'd hurt Trump more than Biden, which is probably her thought process anyways. Idk, what's the downside?
I think that is exactly her thought process
I'm not so sure it actually would hurt Trump more than Biden.
I think that any Republican who was disgusted by Trump didn't vote for him in 2020. I don't think there's too many more voters out there who:
A) voted for him in 2016 B) were appalled by his administration C) voted for him again in 2020 D) were appalled by January 6th E) still plan to vote for him a third time, and F) would change their mind and vote for a 3rd party Cheney in 2024, given the option.
That's a lot of conditions that would have to be met for Cheney to pull a Trump vote.
On the other hand, I think there's probably a lot more voters out there who:
A) Don't like trump and refuse to vote for him in 2024 B) Don't like Biden either, for any number of reasons C) would jump at the chance to cast a vote for a right wing conservative that is not only "not Trump" but in fact "anti-Trump", which mirrors their attitudes toward the main party candidates pretty damn closely.
I feel that Trump's base is smaller but more loyal and dedicated, compared to Biden's base, which has a smaller core but much larger overall...but the non-core part of his base is less cohesive.
Basically, he's running, as in 2020, as "the option that is not trump that the fewest people hate". And honestly, I can't argue with that logic.
That was the logic in the run up to the 2020 election, and other than age, not much has changed, so the strategy isn't likely to meaningfully change either. Add to that situation the facts that 4 years of Biden have been, broadly, "not great, not terrible", that he hasn't been the feeble minded fool that the MAGA base tried to paint him as, and the fact that not too many people really liked him 4 years ago and he still won...and here we are 4 years later with not too many people really liking him (but tons of people liking him better than Trump) and the calculus is pointing toward a repeat of last term.
Honestly at this point, I don't think Biden has been bad enough to turn away anyone who voted for him in 2020, and I don't see anyone voting for Trump in 2016, not voting for him in 2020, and voting for him again in 2024 provided the calculus doesn't change...which it absolutely would if Cheney runs. I think Trump draws less overall votes this go-round (people who have him their vote in 2016 and 2020, but who are turned off enough by the insurrection and legal issues to stay home...not many, but more than the number of new Trump voters), so then it's down to how many votes Biden gets (and of course where he gets them).
That said, I'm far less concerned about advance polling and approval ratings, and I'm far more concerned with voter access in places like Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Virginia, the Carolinas, Wisconsin, and Ohio. If GOP voter suppression works enough to decide close races in these areas, that will have more real impact than anything else. All of that goes out the window, though, if moderates and center-right Republicans see Cheney on the ballot.
Basically, I think Biden holds the advantage in a straight 2020 rematch, but things look a lot less optimistic with Cheney muddying the waters. As much as I hate to say it from a political philosophy standpoint, I think the best path to preventing another Trump win is giving voters less choice next November.
I don't see Cheney pulling many votes from Biden, but I think there's a lot of Republicans who dislike the Christofascist direction Trump has taken the party in yet are still unwilling to vote Democrat, she would be a protest vote for these people as well as a spoiler for Trump.
You're making a lot of opinion statements with nothing at all in the way of reasoning to back it up.
Not saying there isn't reasoning, but in the absence of any of it being shared, it's impossible to even engage such a comment in discourse.
Okay.
I do.
Difference: I explained why.
Please explain how Cheney's presence won't sway at least some moderate centrist voters who don't like either trump or Biden. I disagree with you, but I'm nonetheless interested to hear why you hold your opinions.
I agree with you here.
However, my takeaway from this is: these voters were never going to be Biden voters anyway, so that means they're either going to be non-voters in 2024 based on ideology, or they're going to be Trump voters based on overall party loyalty (that is: "I don't like Trump, but we're still better off with a Republican in the white house...even if it's trump, versus 4 more years of a Democrat"...the inverse of a lot of Biden voters, ironically).
If they were going to be a non-voter, they now become a Cheney voter. Okay great, but it changes literally nothing.
If they were voting for Trump for the party in spite of the man, then Cheney running doesn't change their rationale, and a trump vote, no matter how distasteful, is still the only logical anti-Democrat vote.
Either way, Cheney running isn't meaningfully fracturing the GOP base.
You might be right, I found this article that seems to be supporting your position, that she would help more than hinder Trump, but it relies on extrapolation from a 5-way race with different spoiler candidates. I haven't seen any 2024 polling specifically regarding likely Cheney voters.
And you're not likely to find that kind of polling since polling itself is time and labor intensive, and these pollsters have a finite amount of resources, so they're not going to devote much of them to these outlier scenarios, especially this early.
If Cheney is still in the discussion in 6 months, you'll get that polling.
And as much as that source may support my thinking, it's also very much worth noting nymag's left bias.
I'm arguing against myself here, but in the interests of being circumspect on the topic, right now it seems like the Democratic tactic is accepting they have an unpopular candidate and weakly united coalition of voters, with the one big commonality among them being that everybody desperately wants someone in the white house not named Donald Trump.
On one hand, this makes their job easy over in Campaign Strategy. Just confirm that Joe Biden is not, in fact, Donald Trump...and then remind everybody of that.
On the other, it means that the only real effective way to sort of "herd the flock" and keep the coalition together is to avoid doing or saying anything that might offend anyone under the tent...and constantly, constantly fear monger the shit out of them with theories and polls and op-eds and anything else they can come up with to A) make sure they don't forget how awful Trump is, B) remind them that while they may not like Biden, last they checked, he wasn't Donald Trump, and C) stress how much this election is not in the bag and that just like 2020 they need every single goddamned one of us to get to the polls and vote for Joe Biden, or were going to see another Trump presidency.