The 2024 realignment is real

For Donald Trump fans, one of the many creepy curiosities of this year’s presidential election is that Liz and Dick Cheney and other disgruntled Bush-era Republicans are firmly supporting the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris.

For Harris supporters, meanwhile, it’s strangely alarming that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., scion of the world’s most famous Democratic dynasty, and the former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard are now both superstars in Trumpworld.

The realignment is real. Hippie Democrats, who distrust corporate America, Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, and Washington have grown increasingly fond of Trump. Rich Republican neocons, who prioritize national security (at least their sense of it) over, say, free speech are part of Team Kamala. The problem for Democrats is that the former group is significantly more popular than the latter.

Donald Trump understands this dynamic better than most. That’s why, on stage with Tucker Carlson in Arizona yesterday, he laid into Liz Cheney. “She’s a radical war hawk,” he said.

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

This is classic anti-war rhetoric, something that taps deep into the American psyche and the memory of Vietnam. The moneyed elite wants you, the people, to fight and die for their interests, not America’s. “And when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief,’” as Creedence Clearwater Revival sang, “Ooh they point the cannon at you, Lord.”

Of course, the pro-Democratic media took the bait. Trump threatens to shoot Liz Cheney in the face! scream the headlines today.

“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” replied Liz Cheney herself. “They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”

She must know, at some level, that Trump was not actually threatening her “with death.” He just knows that the more he can make Liz Cheney denounce him, the more he’ll appeal to the broad section of the electorate who distrust people like her. Which begs the question: if Kamala Harris wants to present herself as the “turn the page” candidate, why has she aligned herself with the Cheney family?

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.