An Evening With Kamala and Liz

Harris and Cheney bring the campaign to deepest red Wisconsin

Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Well, that was remarkable. The oddest couple in American politics here in the heart of reddest Wisconsin. My conversation with Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney was their third of the day. On Monday, they campaigned in Pennsylvania (where Sarah Longwell moderated) and Michigan, before coming to Brookfield, Wisconsin. And, as I sat there on stage, I couldn’t help thinking what a completely not-normal moment this was.

ICYMI: You can watch the whole thing here:

Happy Tuesday. There are just two weeks left until Election Day.

To the Contrary is a reader-supported publication. You may disagree with me from time to time (and I expect you will, because I’m not promising you a safe space here). But I’ll always try to give it to you straight. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. (And I’m immensely grateful for your generous support.)

“Crucial Waukesha County”

Here’s some of the coverage from the state’s largest newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

BROOKFIELD – With just two weeks to go before Election Day, former Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris were back in Wisconsin Monday making their pitch to undecided voters.

This time, the duo chose the highly coveted Waukesha County, one of the traditionally deep red suburban counties surrounding Milwaukee in which Democrats have made inroads in recent years.

In April's GOP presidential primary, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley won about 14% of the vote — just over 9,000 votes — in Waukesha County….

Conservative former talk show host and fellow Trump critic Charlie Sykes, who moderated the conversation, opened by jokingly welcoming the audience to a production of "The Odd Couple."

"I never thought that I would be here, you never thought that I would be here, but that's because this is not a normal election," he said. "This is not an election between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives."

Some of the highlights:

Harris, Cheney and Sykes framed a second Trump term as a threat to the U.S. and the world….

"We've never faced a threat like this before, and I think it’s so important for people to realize this Republic only survives if we protect it, and that means putting partisan politics aside and standing up for the Constitution and for what's right and loving our country," Cheney said to applause from the audience.

Via HuffPo:

Waukesha County, which propelled Republican Scott Walker to the governorship in 2010, ushering in a period of right-wing ascendancy, was a fitting final location for a presidential campaign that is aggressively courting moderate Republicans and independents ― the kind cut from the same cloth as Cheney and Sykes ― to keep former President Donald Trump out of the White House. From 2016 to 2020, the affluent county, still a GOP stronghold, swung about six points toward the Democratic presidential nominee.

In keeping with the goal of moving the suburban needle further still, Harris, Cheney and Sykes spent the bulk of their time on areas of agreement: Trump’s disrespect for cornerstone American institutions like free and fair elections, his threat to the U.S.-led liberal order in the world, and his indecent character.

Sykes, an anti-Trump conservative from the Milwaukee suburbs who formally endorsed Harris on Monday, began the event with an election nerd joke about the event taking place in “crucial Waukesha County.”

He then asked Harris to explain why she was asking Republicans to forsake their party, and almost certainly a lot of their policy beliefs, to cast a vote for her.

“We love our country, and we believe in the foundational principles that are at stake in this election,” Harris said. “There is more we have in common than what separates us when we think about what is at stake in terms of our democracy, rule of law, the Constitution of the United States, national security, the standing of our country in the context of the world ― all of that is at stake.”

As you’d expect, Cheney brought the heat:

Cheney also delivered the line of the night in a response to a question from Dan Voboril, an undecided and retired school teacher, who wanted to know how to convince people like him and his conservative siblings that Trump will worsen the “toxicity” in American culture.

“If you wouldn’t hire somebody to babysit your kids, then you shouldn’t make that guy the president of the United States,” she said, prompting whoops of laughter and applause from the crowd.

Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Because America deserves better

On Monday, the Journal-Sentinel also published a lengthy Q & A, where I tried to explain why moderates and conservatives ought to cross party lines this year.

Question: Why are you voting for Kamala Harris?

Answer: I understand how surreal it seems for somebody who spent a quarter of a century being a conservative talk show host to vote for a Democrat. But this is not a normal presidential election. This is not a choice between liberals and conservatives. It is a choice about democratic norms.

I think it is absolutely essential to keep Donald Trump from the White House again. America deserves better than a chronic liar, a convicted felon who tried to overturn a legitimate election and incited a violent attack on the Capitol, and who openly talks about terminating the Constitution. So, as a conservative, this is ultimately not a difficult choice.

Q: Before she became vice president, Harris was very liberal on some issues. What’s it like to endorse someone who once supported the Green New Deal?

A: There’s no question that I disagree with her on a wide variety of issues. But at this point, I cannot tolerate someone who wants to shred the Constitution. There comes a point where you say, all right, we are not ideologically aligned, but we are united in our respect for the Constitution. And this does feel like a moment to put country over party.

I’m really struck by the degree to which Kamala Harris has reached across the political aisle and has made it very clear that she wants the votes of centrist and center-right voters who have not changed their principles, but are disgusted by what they see on the Republican ticket.

Fight over union rights in Wisconsin foreshadowed hyper-polarization

Q: With so many conservative leaders and former Trump officials insisting that he is dangerous, clueless, or both, why are the polls so close? Why isn’t your former radio audience coming along with you? This is a razor-thin race.

A: I think that’s a tribute to the hyper-polarization of our politics. And I look back on my days on the radio and recognize that I did contribute to that

In Wisconsin, I think we foreshadowed some of that extreme partisanship during the fight over Act 10 (author's note: Passed in 2011, Act 10 restricted collective bargaining and wages for thousands of Wisconsin public employees, including teachers. It led to massive protests and an unsuccessful attempt to recall then-Gov. Walker).

I regret a lot of that because I’m seeing the way it plays out, the way in which Republicans have been willing to shed one value after another in the name of party loyalty.

The fight becomes about the fight. The specifics of the issue matter less than our side winning and the other side losing. It’s been translated into just “owning the libs.”

Q: Are there other reasons that Republicans and Democrats remain so entrenched?

A: There’s the media ecosystem that we see today. I was part of this.

We’ve created these alternative reality silos that are almost impossible to penetrate. So Donald Trump is able to spread disinformation, to spin his lies and advance conspiracy theories, to an audience that is increasingly immune to any sort of fact-checking. This explains the political moment where half of America is looking at the other half of America and thinking, “Who are you? How can you possibly think these things?”

You used to have people in the Republican Party going all the way back to Abraham Lincoln who said that we need to appeal to the better angels of our nature. Those voices have either been silenced or exiled now from the Republican Party.

You can read the whole thing here.

Finally

In my introduction, I pointed out that “We’re not going to be talking about a few things.”

“We’re not going to be talking about sharks and electrocution.

“We’re not going to be going through Tony Evers playlist and swaying to the music for 40 minutes….

“We’re not going to be talking about Jewish space lasers or Arnold Palmer’s… putting game.

“That’s the other event down the road.”

Some bonus Pete

His favorite jacket.

**

With baby Eli and Auggie.

**