Welcome to Thunderdome. Liz Cheney is campaigning with Kamala Harris today in Wisconsin at Ripon, known as the birthplace of the Republican Party at the Little White Schoolhouse. It was there in 1854 at a church meeting that Whig and Free Soil Party members gathered to form a “great irresistible Northern party, organized on the single issue of the non-extension of slavery.” This was even then pretty aggressive language for the Episcopalian who called the meeting, but not for Horace Greeley, who publicized it to the nation. Whatever Liz Cheney says today about how important it is to elect Kamala Harris will no doubt equal the historical significance of that moment, at least according to Rachel Maddow. But I’m here to tell you that this is actually important and matters a great deal in understanding 2024 — just not for the reasons the media will tell you it does.

One of the most consistent polling truths of the 2024 cycle has been a steady decline in the salience of Democratic warnings, leaned into so heavily by Joe Biden, that the re-election of Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. In fact, the “democracy is on the ballot” language has now reached a point where both parties, along with independents, share fears about the future of the republic for very different reasons. 

At the conclusion of Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, CBS’s moderators teed up one last softball to try to help a flailing, saucer-eyed Tim Walz, giving him the opportunity to run through a bullet point list of January 6-related fears. Democrats fear that Donald Trump will make himself a king or an emperor, ginned up by once-respectable institutions like the Atlantic and never-respectable fearmongers that populate the panels of MSNBC and CNN, many with “former FBI” in their chyrons. 

But Republicans are also fearful about the issues associated with the aggressive lawfare of Democrats — not just against Trump, but against them and their ideological allies by the soul-crushing power of bureaucracy and out-of-control legal authorities. (Just this week, California Democrats announced they’ll be suing a Catholic hospital for sending a patient to another hospital because they don’t perform abortions after a heartbeat is detected.) And Independents, along with many Republicans, are particularly concerned about free speech, with the government under Biden and Harris relying on an alliance between Big Government and Big Tech using the power of Silicon Valley to shut down speech by many people expressing contrarian views, including the likes of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and others. 

The fact that Walz responded to that same final question to advance his ignorant and utterly unconstitutional view, falsely claiming in response to JD Vance that, “You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme court test,” will not allay any of those fears. And given that he’s previously said there’s no First Amendment protection for “hate speech,” it’s indicative of a pattern of anti-speech sentiment, as Jonathan Turley notes in USA Today here.

Enter Liz Cheney. The scion of the ideological father of the PATRIOT Act, Liz entered politics with big dreams of going straight from the swamp to the Senate. Her 2013 announcement that she was running for Senate in Wyoming was geotagged to “McLean, Virginia.” In her brief campaign, reporter Jon Ward noticed her hands were stained because she was wearing brand-new blue jeans on the trail. And so desperate was she to gain social conservative support, she even rejected her own sister, Mary, over her gay marriage. It was all for naught: incumbent senator Mike Enzi had been weighing retirement, but, perturbed at the younger Cheney’s audacity, resolved to run again. Liz had to drop out and settle for an open House seat two years later. So sad!

For the next few years, Cheney played the part of a loyal Republican in the public eye, going on TV in the 2020 cycle to decry the Democratic ticket — including Kamala Harris. “Kamala Harris is a radical liberal and supports dangerous policies that would devastate millions of Americans,” she said, and posted: “Kamala Harris is a radical liberal who would raise taxes, take away guns & health insurance, and explode the size and power of the federal gov’t. She wants to recreate America in the image of what’s happening on the streets of Portland & Seattle. We won’t give her the chance.” Now she’s in Wisconsin dedicating herself to ensuring Kamala has the chance to make that a reality.

Here’s the problem: by leaning into the Liz Cheney factor, and prominently citing Dick Cheney’s endorsement (plus Taylor Swift!) as Walz did in the debate, the Harris-Walz effort is falling into the trap of starting the final month of their campaign appealing to voters they already have. There isn’t a single undecided voter out there who Liz Cheney’s presence on the trail will convince to be newly opposed to Trump. The MSNBC fans are already well-versed in all of this stuff, and the January 6 cudgel — used to very limited degrees of success in 2022 — is duller than Andy Dufresne’s rock hammer. 

Think about it this way: The voters are consistently telling you they care deeply about a handful of issues — the economy, immigration, crime and security around the world — and you’re closing out your campaign linking arms with Liz Cheney, a once and current swamp creature whose most prominent factors are her association with global warmongering, government crackdowns on speech and an obsession with relitigating January 6?

If you want to win Wisconsin, you don’t go there with an appeal doubling down on the voters you already have, touting a has-been ex-Republican with all the baggage that helps the Trump-Vance campaign depict you as someone tied to elite out-of-touch insiders, who cares more about satisfying Rachel Maddow than the needs of working families today. But that’s what Kamala Harris is doing. Paired with Walz’s performance in the debate, the Harris-Walz campaign is now winning the battle to determine who’s more online. And that’s the quickest path to end up just like Liz: a political loser.

Fallout from Walz’s failure

Politico on Democratic response: a missed opportunity.

Tim Walz was supposed to cut through the political nonsense to speak plainly to Americans about out-of-touch Republicans. But instead, some Democrats were alarmed by his performance at Tuesday’s debate and said he failed to capitalize on his opponents’ weaknesses.

Despite days of debate prep and weeks of delivering savaging critiques of former President Donald Trump on the campaign trail, they say Walz at times struggled to concisely argue why Vice President Kamala Harris would be a better president. Some Democrats were deflated after a clearly nervous Walz tripped over his words. Even Walz’s debate-night surrogates appeared somewhat surprised at how civil the governor was.

“Tim Walz was extra Minnesota nice,” said DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, when asked in an interview immediately after the debate whether Walz was forceful enough.

A swing-state Democratic strategist put it more bluntly: “I definitely think it was a missed opportunity.”

“That is not the appearance and debate you would want,” said the strategist, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about Walz. “[JD] Vance got away with a lot.”

Neither campaign can afford a high-profile stumble with fewer than thirty-five days left before Election Day, and while Tuesday’s debate wasn’t a disaster for Walz by any stretch, the general assessment was that the Minnesota governor didn’t deliver and “take on Vance and some of his lies,” as one Pennsylvania Democratic strategist said.

Left unsaid was why Walz didn’t deploy attack lines he used effectively on the campaign trail, including painting Vance as an out-of-touch “venture capitalist” who has previously complained that “childless cat ladies” are ruling the US, or that GOP efforts to dictate what Americans can do in the privacy of their own bedrooms are “weird.”

“It was more congenial than I thought it would be, for sure,” Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said in an interview. Crockett added there was “a lot of pressure” for Walz, who had never faced such a high level of national scrutiny.

An estimated 43 million people tuned in to see Walz’s poor performance, making it roughly equivalent to an NFL playoff game. And the immediate aftermath has had Walz dancing around his “fish tales”, demonstrating an inability to put concerns regarding fabulist claims about his life to rest. Privately, some Democrats are wishing Harris had chosen Josh Shapiro instead. If she loses in Pennsylvania, they’ll be saying it even louder post-election.

Is the Trump-Vance abortion spin working?

Trump and Vance are counting on pro-life voters to stay in the fold, even as they skew toward the center. Democrats are concerned it might work.

Trump and Vance’s efforts on the debate stage and on social media Tuesday night were the latest examples of the GOP ticket’s months-long effort to neutralize one of Democrats’ most effective lines of attack and rebrand as moderate on abortion, and there are signs it might be working.

Recent polling in several battleground states shows that many who support abortion rights — and plan to vote for state-level protections for the procedure — also plan to cast their vote for Trump despite his self-professed leading role in overturning Roe v. Wade. And with the presidential race locked within the margin of error a month out from the election, the GOP’s ability to peel off even a sliver of undecided or Democratic-leaning voters could make a difference in November.

“I’m sure JD Vance put the fear in Democratic consultants last night because their magic message of ‘Republicans are bad on abortion’ seemed, to me, to be mitigated,” said Stan Barnes, an Arizona strategist and former GOP lawmaker. “For a lot of voters, I think the threat of a national ban rings hollow.”

Democrats and abortion-rights groups are denouncing Vance and Trump’s remarks as semantic games and misinformation — pointing to the myriad ways the Trump administration previously reduced access to abortion through executive actions and court appointments and to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and other plans Trump allies have pushed to eliminate most abortions.

That’s one reason you’ll see headlines emphasizing that you can’t trust Republicans on abortion as we see today in NBC, Time and Vanity Fair — despite the fact that it’s Walz’s record that is the radical one according to any national polling on the question:

O’Donnell: “Former President Trump said in the last debate that you believe abortion ‘in the ninth month’ is absolutely fine. … Is that what you support?” 

Walz: “That’s not what the bill says.” 

Walz’s claim is false.

Walz has not publicly expressed personal support for late-term abortions, but his claim that Minnesota legislation does not allow for abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy is unfounded. In 2023, Walz signed a bill that established the right to abortion in Minnesota with no gestational limits. As the Dispatch Fact Checkreported previously:

Earlier in 2023, Walz signed legislation enshrining the right to abortion into Minnesota law following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. The new statute established that “Every individual who becomes pregnant has a fundamental right to … obtain an abortion,” and did not include any restrictions or prohibitions. Minnesota currently has no statutory limits on abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

One more thing

I’ve been harping on the ludicrous uselessness of The Drudge Report this cycle, which — whether it’s even still run by him or not — has apparently decided the path to please corporate advertisers is to downplay Trump’s chances and boost first Biden then Harris all the time, no matter what. The morning after Tim Walz’s disastrous debate performance, Drudge’s headlines would’ve even raised the eyebrows of critics like Jake Tapper: “Vance-Walz Debate Dull… JD eyeliner steals spotlight… Vance refuses to admit The Don lost 2020 election… Trump mixes up words, swerves among subjects in off-topic speech… Backs Out of 60 MINS Interview; Breaks with 50 Year Tradition…” That fedora sure is spinning fast! And his old friend Ann Coulter has taken notice, writing today: “Whoever bought the Drudge Report isn’t fooling anyone.” It’s a real shame to see a once-useful site go completely off the rails, but at least it’s one more place you can ignore without missing anything.