'Democrats Lost Them': Here's Why 2020 Biden Voters Sat Out The 2024 Election (Rolling Stone)

[Rob H.]

38. That statement flies in the face of reality

The time spent by the Harris campaign to woo moderate Republican voters was time frittered away during a campaign with no time to waste; Republicans, moderate or not, were never going to vote for Harris, anyway. Hitting the campaign trail with Cheney cost Democrats time, money, and resources that would've been better spent elsewhere.

Liz Cheney Was an Electoral Fiasco for Kamala Harris
Conservatives backed Trump by bigger percentages than in 2020. And time spent with Cheney prevented Harris from reaching out to the voters she needed.

John Nichols

(...)
This reality is most apparent in the election results from Ripon. The east-central Wisconsin city where abolitionists, land reformers, and utopian socialists founded the Republican Party in 1854 seemed ripe for a cross-party appeal. Ripon has been a Republican stronghold for 170 years, but the city is also a college town that in the past has shown a good measure of enthusiasm for Democrats such as Barack Obama. But that’s not how things played out on Election Day.

On November 5, Trump won 53.8 percent of the vote (2,097 ballots) in the city of Ripon, while 45 percent (1,753 ballots) voted for Harris.

That was a worse finish for the Democratic ticket than in 2020, when Joe Biden won 46.6 percent (1,820 ballots), while 51.7 percent (2,019 ballots) voted for Trump.

(...)

Every day was precious, and every signal sent to potential voters was significant. The days spent with Cheney, and the resources expended to promote endorsements from neoconservative Republicans, cost the Democrats in significant ways. They sent a signal to potential Democratic voters, many of who recalled the Iraq War and other Cheney projects, that the focus of the campaign was on outreach to the right, They ate up time that could have been spent campaigning in union halls in working-class communities with figures such as United Auto Workers union president Shawn Fain and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. They burned up time that could have been devoted to sincere, if difficult, conversations about Gaza. They foreclosed opportunities to reach out to Latino communities in swing states. The list goes on and on.

But the bottom line is constant: Every minute that Kamala Harris spent with Liz Cheney was a colossal waste of the candidate’s time.