Harris Still Needs to Reassure Voters She’s Not Too Liberal

BROOKFIELD, Wisconsin — Vice President Kamala Harris and former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney descended on the crucial Milwaukee suburbs Monday night and, sitting side by side, delivered compelling political sermons.

The problem was they were preaching to the converted.

The event was explicitly aimed at those moderates and onetime Republicans who remain up for grabs, and may decide the election, but the rhetoric seemed better suited for those in the audience wearing “The Lincoln Project” and “LA” t-shirts.

The political odd couple criticized former President Donald Trump’s lack of decency, his disregard for the Constitution and rule of law, and asked those in attendance to imagine him without guardrails. Our allies abroad, they said, were nervous. And, of course, there was a detailed recounting of what Trump did (and didn’t do) on January 6.

Those are all profoundly serious issues and are part of the reason why the race, in an otherwise turbulent year for Democrats, remains competitive. But reams of voting results and research indicate those issues long ago pushed so many people away from Trump’s GOP. They are not what animates that small number of people who remain undecided in the second-to-last week of October. What new voters are being won with denunciations of Donald Trump’s character?

The discussion here was backward-looking and Trump-focused. It was, in short, all about yesterday and him rather than tomorrow and her.

And not for a lack of opportunity.

The evening’s moderator, Wisconsin conservative talk show host turned anti-Trump writer Charlie Sykes, opened with the political equivalent of a fastball down the middle of the plate.

Perched beneath a "Country Over Party sign," Sykes asked Harris for her pitch to the voter who supported Republicans from yesteryear but are uneasy now about casting a ballot for a Democrat.

The vice president began by citing “the lived experience” of most Americans — sounding more like a graduate student from down the road in Madison than most Americans — of having much in common.

She repeated a line from her stump speech about how Americans “love our country” before praising democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution. Then, making a little progress, she invoked her service on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where lawmakers from both parties put aside partisanship to focus on protecting the “security and well-being” of all Americans. That, Harris concluded, “is at stake.”

That was it.

Harris said nothing specific about how she’d govern, mentioned no looming issue on which she’d work with Republicans and offered no reassurances about leading the country from the political center.

And, of course, there was no critique of her own party or even an expression of sympathy or understanding about why voting for a liberal could be difficult for a longtime conservative. There wasn’t even a reference to her previous commitments to include a Republican in the cabinet or create a bipartisan council of advisers.

And this was in response to the opening question from a pre-selected moderator who is supporting her campaign!

It's not for a lack of effort to push her, and I don’t just mean from wise-guy columnists. There are people eager for her to win, and even more eager to see Trump defeated, nudging her and her campaign to go further. Merely condemning the former president and celebrating what unites Americans isn’t enough. Yet Harris just can’t seem to go beyond that, to sketch out what her version of Washington in 2025 would look like. That reluctance is confounding Democrats, who hear the echoes of Hillary Clinton's campaign in Harris's focus on Trump's character. "You picking up 2016 vibes?" one Democratic lawmaker texted, without prompting on Tuesday. I grasp the delicacies involved. Democrats have always been a coalition party, a patchwork of constituencies. That coalition has grown more cacophonous in the Trump era, as the party has stretched from socialists to, quite literally, the Cheney family. However, successful modern Democrats have always found a way to reassure the vital center while retaining their liberal base. And the determination bordering on desperation across the coalition to beat Trump offers Harris more latitude than most of her Democratic forbearers. That's why she was with Cheney in the first place.

The former congressperson invoked the rule of law and Constitution before quickly turning to Trump’s “cruelty” as he watched the attack on the Capitol unfold.

The former president, she said, is “a man who’s unfit to be the president of this good and honorable and great nation.”

Millions agree, which is why Trump has never come close to a majority in his previous two elections. But what more evidence is required from those two elections that litigating Trump’s character and fitness is insufficient?

Cheney then gently tried to make a case for Harris, telling the audience the vice president would uphold the rule of law, lead with “a sincere heart” and do what is best for America. “We might not agree on every issue but she is somebody that you can trust and that our children can look up to,” Cheney said.

Which is about as far as she may feel comfortable going in discussing how Harris would govern. After all, the two barely know each other. The onus is on the vice president to reassure voters.

And, remarkably at this late date, she remains reluctant to tell fence-sitters what they want to hear: not that Trump is a bad man, but that she’s not going to steer America to the left.

There were other opportunities here. Another self-declared, lifelong Republican in the audience pined for the days of Ronald Reagan and former Speaker Tip O’Neill and asked the women what they could offer “people like me” in the final weeks of the race. Something, this voter said, he could “take with me.”

Cheney said Trump wasn’t worthy of the sacrifice American troops have made and represented a betrayal of the founding fathers’ vision.

Her applause line, though, came when the former congressperson said: “If you wouldn’t hire somebody to babysit your kids, you shouldn’t make that guy President of the United States.”

The crowd loved it, but those people clapping already have a name. They’re called Harris voters.

The vice president then said America is ambitious and optimistic, repeated one of her go-to lines that a leader isn’t somebody who beats people down but lifts them up and said Trump “has no plans to invest in our future.”

Again, this was in response to a direct plea for something a voter could take with him.

There were two other, similar events Monday featuring the two women in suburban Philadelphia and Detroit, where Cheney shrewdly reminded voters that they could “vote their conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody.”

But will anything else from the sessions break through?

Since her strong convention speech and superb debate performance, Harris has run out of what her campaign calls tentpole moments. She now needs to drive news in other ways. Appearing with Cheney is a way to do that, but it’s of limited utility if that’s the beginning and end of the messaging.

This remains a winnable race for Harris, but she’s getting hammered in television ads for being a liberal thanks to the far-left stances she took in her ill-fated presidential bid. If she says nothing to contradict that onslaught, voters will believe it. No matter how much she says Donald Trump is a bad man.

The clock is ticking.