Cheneys’ Harris endorsement is a big deal elsewhere, but not Wyoming

In my informal poll about Dick and Liz Cheney endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, I couldn’t find any Wyomingites who were surprised or thought it was a big deal.

I was fishing for reactions at the time, not attributable quotes, so I’m not going to out people who shared their thoughts. They’re not political heavyweights, just hardworking Wyoming residents with opinions. At opposite ends of the political spectrum, here’s what two had to say:

“I expected it,” said a Democrat who crossed over in 2022 to vote for then-Rep. Liz Cheney in the Republican congressional primary. Even though she lost to Harriet Hageman by a landslide, he respects Cheney for standing up to former President Donald Trump and has no regrets. In fact, he’d do it again.

But former Vice President Dick Cheney pledging to vote for Harris sparked a different emotion. “I mean, this is the guy we’ve always called Darth Vader,” he said. “It’s difficult to think of [Harris] getting behind that. It’s just, well, weird.”

I’d put his response in the same category as Joseph Geevarghese, head of the left-wing group Our Revolution, who told The Atlantic columnist Russell Berman that the news made him cringe. “At the end of the day, I’m not sure progressives want to be that big-tent,” he said.

A GOP acquaintance who said she’s used to being branded a RINO, the extreme right-wing insult for a “Republican in name only,” told me she doesn’t think a father and daughter in Wyoming’s conservative political dynasty changing sides will have any impact here. I agree with that.

“They kicked [Liz Cheney] out of the House leadership, censured her, and dragged her name through the mud because she voted to impeach Trump,” she said. “So, the fact she’ll vote Democrat and her father supports her is hardly a surprise.”

The woman didn’t reveal who will get her vote. But she will cast a ballot, and though she isn’t part of Trump’s cult, perhaps she’s still weighing her options.

But outside of Wyoming, people are seeing the Cheneys’ endorsement of Harris through starkly different lenses. The fascinating part about the national reaction to me is how much some people think it will make a difference, and how happy or angry it’s made them.

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, who worked for Dick Cheney when he was George W. Bush’s vice president, told her audience that even casual followers of American politics may think “that hell has frozen over.” She called the news “a political bombshell.”

Wallace played a clip of Liz Cheney announcing who will get her father’s vote during a public interview with the Texas Tribune, which Dick Cheney later confirmed is Harris. The announcement was met with wild applause.

“This is a big freaking deal,” Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher told Wallace, adding there’s no comparison to it in modern American history. 

“There’s very few more iconic conservative names over the last two decades than the Cheneys,” he said. “Lord knows we could certainly disagree [with Dick Cheney] on a lot of policy issues, but we don’t think of him as someone who’s not patriotic; [he] loves his country and fights for democracy and what he believes about America.”

Over on Fox News, host Piers Morgan was shell-shocked.

“What is Dick Cheney doing endorsing the most progressive left-wing Democratic nominee in history?” Morgan said. “That alone is utterly ridiculous. And secondly, what is Kamala Harris doing suddenly embracing him like this is some great honor, given the way the liberal Democrats have talked about him for the last 30 years?”

Harris was shopping and posing for selfies with customers at a Pennsylvania spice shop when reporters broke the news.

“I’m honored to have their endorsement,” Harris said. She added they were “making a courageous statement that it’s OK, if not important, to put the country above party.”

Trump’s campaign posted on social media an interview Liz Cheney gave to Fox News four years ago. She attacked Harris, describing her voting record in the Senate as to the left of Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. “It’s very clear, she is a radical liberal,” Cheney said.

Such smack talk is water under the bridge now. Harris and the Cheneys agree Trump is a grave threat to our democracy, and that’s all that matters.

I recall Liz Cheney smiling broadly at Trump’s side as he signed bills they both supported. Of course, after his second impeachment and her serving as vice chair of the House select committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection he incited on Jan. 6, 2021, there’s been an endless stream of bitter comments on both sides.

“What Liz Cheney did with the Unselect Committee of Political Losers is unthinkable,” Trump raged on Truth Social. “She and her Unselects deleted and destroyed all evidence and information. IT’S GONE,” he wrote. “Cheney and the others should be prosecuted for what they did, but Comrade Kamala is even worse!”

Back in the good ol’ days, Trump would have welcomed Liz Cheney’s support. Even Dick Cheney, who called Trump a “liberal Democrat” during the 2016 GOP presidential primary season, voted for him that year and in 2020.

If Liz Cheney had an epiphany in 2016 and decided she couldn’t stomach Trump and backed Democrat Hillary Clinton, it would have derailed her first run for the House, and politically stopped Cheney in her tracks.

But like virtually all would-be GOP freshmen, Cheney hitched her star to Trump, though she did criticize him at times, including for his attacks on NATO. For the next four years, she voted in line with his positions nearly 93% of the time. She rose to the No. 3 post in House Republican leadership in record time, and breezed to victory by nearly matching the 70% of votes Trump won in Wyoming in 2020.

When you view it from that perspective, I see why some political observers say this complete break with their party as long as Trump is in command is a big freaking deal.

Politico noted Liz Cheney has control of millions of dollars in PAC money she can use to help Harris. Surveys support the notion that most voters have already made up their minds, but both campaigns are searching for voters in battleground states still sitting on the fence. There may be room for the needle to move after all.

Perhaps it’s his unwillingness to let go of a grudge, but Trump reportedly hasn’t forgiven Nikki Haley, his former U.N. ambassador, for challenging him. Even after dropping out, she snared one-third of GOP voters in several primaries. They are now up for grabs, and Harris is actively courting them while Haley is backing Trump.

At a Fox News town hall, Trump threatened to blacklist donors to Haley’s campaign even if they returned to his side. “They say you should take everybody, but that’s not the way I’m built,” Trump fumed. It could be his downfall.

Harris doesn’t have the luxury of kicking voters out of her camp, which is why she welcomes conservative Republicans. Some progressive voters may be peeved about sharing space under the Democratic tent with Darth Vader and his daughter, but if the most important thing is to make sure Trump never gets near the White House again — and it is — they have nowhere else to go.