Addition and Subtraction

Why the Cheney endorsement matters

Photo by Crissy Jarvis on Unsplash

Successful political parties are about addition.

They strive to assemble the largest possible coalition of voters by broadening their appeal along an ideological spectrum that in normal times ranges from center-left to center-right.

Traditionally, political parties expend tremendous energy figuring out how to situate as close as possible to the center of public opinion without alienating their more ideological supporters who occupy the regions a bit farther from the middle.

During primary campaigns, when candidates are competing for hardcore partisans, political discourse can take on a bit of an edge. Winning a party nomination requires building a coalition in its own right by appealing to the party base, but successful candidates recognize that the coalition necessary to defeat intra-party opponents is never broad enough to win a general election. That’s why it’s customary for presidential candidates to begin to move to the center once they become their party’s presumptive nominee, and soften some of the positions they took to win the nomination.

American public opinion historically has been fairly moderate, which means there are usually a decisive number of voters occupying a space that’s reachable by candidates of both parties. The energy in presidential campaigns often flows from attempts by both nominees to convince these so-called moderates to swing their way.

Political parties understand that the broader their appeal, the more likely they are to win. It’s a matter of math.

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Unsuccessful political parties are about subtraction.

When a party is captured by an ideologue it can close itself off to voters outside its base by demanding that supporters pass a purity test as the price of admission. This doesn’t happen often, and it rarely happens for long, because the result is typically unpleasant when a party makes demands on the electorate rather than accommodating the demands the electorate is making on the party.

A notable example of this phenomenon is Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign against Lyndon Johnson. In accepting the Republican nomination, Goldwater famously declared, “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! . . . moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

He carried six states.

It is tempting to conclude that the MAGA-occupied Republican party of 2024 is analogous to the Goldwater party of 1964, but there are a couple of key differences that may help explain why Trump’s party has demonstrated surprising staying power over the past decade.

The biggest difference is that a portion of the electorate has radicalized around Trumpism in a way that never happened with Goldwater. Back in 64, modal public opinion in the United States still clustered toward the center, leaving Goldwater’s extreme (for the time) agenda to compete for voters he could never reach.

Trump, in contrast, has both tapped into and perpetuated a well of public support for a reactionary politics that stands apart from the rest of the country. He’s not just out on the right—he occupies the right fringe. Normally, there are few voters there, so parties with extreme platforms languish in the backwaters of our politics without coming close to having the ability to take power.

But as the reactionary right has ballooned in response to the seismic shifts in our politics caused by the generational earthquake we are experiencing, Trump has been able to rely on this intense minority of voters to make him competitive.

Goldwater wasn’t operating on terrain like this. He had to run in a conventional environment where the voters who decided elections still resided in the middle. Unable to appeal to them, he ceded the largest swath of political territory to Johnson, who predictably won in a landslide.

It is also noteworthy that Trump is not ideological the way Goldwater was. MAGA is not about moving right or left but backward. And when you’re moving backward you will never appeal to voters who want to move forward.

This is where the party of 64 and the party of 24 share an important and potentially decisive trait. Both have engaged in subtraction.

Goldwater was happy to treat anyone who wasn’t on board with his agenda as a transgressor. Trump treats anyone who opposes him as an enemy.

Because Trump controls his reactionary voters, because his base is large enough to make him viable, because it is possible to finish second and be elected president, and because Republican elites through cowardice and fear have refused to oppose him, Trump is and has been a potent political threat.

But he never looks beyond his base. He aims not to moderate MAGA to make it acceptable to more people, but to impose MAGA on everyone by whatever means necessary. The extra-constitutional threat posed by this position may yet turn out to be the real story of this election, but from the standpoint of actually winning the old fashioned way, Trump is most certainly engaged in subtraction.

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Which brings us to Liz Cheney.

I found it stunning to listen to Cheney last Thursday, campaigning with Kamala Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, which is widely regarded as the birthplace of the anti-slavery Republican party prior to the Civil War.

Cheney spoke as a conservative to explain why she is standing in opposition to the party that has been her home for her entire professional life. Referencing the 2004 election when she was campaigning for her father’s ticket, Cheney said:

In that election, twenty years ago, when we were campaigning in Wisconsin and all across the country, we were campaigning as compassionate conservatives. What January 6 shows us is that there is not an ounce—not an ounce—of compassion in Donald Trump. He is petty, he is vindictive, and he is cruel, and Donald Trump is not fit to lead this good and great nation.

There may not be many Democrats who have fond memories of Dick Cheney, the Bush years, or the notion of compassionate conservatism. Yet here was a crowd of Harris supporters chanting, “Thank you, Liz,” as the Democratic nominee graciously accepted Cheney’s endorsement by calling her “an extraordinary national leader”:

She not only, as she has talked today, recognizes that character is among the most important attributes of leadership, but she also personifies that attribute. And she possesses some of the qualities of character that I most respect in any individual and any leader. Courage, especially at a moment like this, where there are so many powerful forces that have been intent on trying to demean and belittle and make people afraid. And there are many who know it is wrong and then there are those who have the courage to speak out loudly about it, and the conviction to speak truth. And, you know, it is so admirable when anyone does it, and especially when it is difficult to do in an environment such as this. But Liz Cheney really is a leader who puts country above party and above self, a true patriot, and it is my profound honor to have [her] support.”

This is what addition looks like.

During the Republican primaries, roughly one in five voters supported someone other than Donald Trump, even when his nomination was certain and all his opponents had dropped out. They turned out when they could have stayed home to make a statement about their party.

These voters are available to Kamala Harris. These voters are the ones who might listen to Liz Cheney.

Harris is doing what effective campaigns do when they see an opportunity to widen their appeal. She is assembling and holding together a broad-based pro-democracy coalition stretching from the Cheneys to Bernie Sanders to stand against the threat posed by Donald Trump.

If she is successful next month, it will be because of the voters she added that Trump subtracted.