The publication of Liz Cheney’s new book “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning” has thrust her back into the national spotlight. Friendly interviews with liberal TV icons like Rachel Maddow and Stephen Colbert helped the book reach the top of bestseller lists. Such enthusiasm for the former GOP representative in Democratic and liberal circles is understandable — but it’s also a hazardous dynamic if Democrats want to retain the White House for another four years.
During her last term as Wyoming’s representative in the House, Cheney was an admirable truthteller as she excoriated Donald Trump with key facts and deft rhetoric. Her attacks on Trump as a dire threat to American democracy rang true. But the Democratic establishment’s embrace of Cheney could actually end up damaging the Biden campaign by reducing the turnout of voters who believe in the Democratic Party’s core precepts.
The current problem was foreshadowed in early January 2022, when Liz Cheney’s father Dick Cheney visited the House floor to mark the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. While showing up to support his daughter’s brave anti-Trump stand, the former vice president was met with profuse accolades from top Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went out of her way to ignore past differences, shaking the elder Cheney’s hand and later telling reporters, “We were very honored by his being there.”
But many Democrats don’t want to see their leadership embracing prominent Republicans just because they speak out against Trump. When Liz Cheney was a member of Congress, she voted in line with President Trump 93 percent of the time. On matters like abortion rights, environmental protection, racial justice, civil liberties and national security, the younger Cheney has consistently fought for positions that the vast majority of Democrats see as inimical to the best interests of the country.
It’s one thing to strive for a united front — which will be necessary — to defeat Trump if he is the GOP nominee. But if Democratic leaders are seen as aligning themselves with Cheney, her record of voting against virtually everything that the Democratic base believes in could add to the alienation that’s already felt by millions of young people who voted for Biden in 2020 but now see him as an unprincipled compromiser undeserving of their vote next year.
If Trump is the Republican nominee, Cheney will likely be a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention, complete with a primetime TV slot. But for many Democratic voters, coziness with the likes of Cheney could be a turnoff.
If Trump is defeated in November 2024, it will not be because Democrats wooed Republican luminaries and conservative voters willing to defect from their own party. It will be because of a sufficiently large turnout from the Democratic base.
“While her work on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol has been exemplary,” John Nichols noted last year, “she has an ugly history of exploiting political divisions by promoting Big Lies, as Cheney did when she refused to reject Trump’s vile ‘birther’ lies about former President Barack Obama, and when she claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris ‘sounds just like Karl Marx.’”
In fact, Cheney often sounds just like the infamous Sen. Joe McCarthy and his present-day imitators Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Ted Cruz. Her hostility toward progressives has been visceral and unrestrained, while her extreme positions are well-documented. If the Democratic Party provides her with high-profile platforms next year, the maneuver could backfire by driving away voters who are already unsure about voting for the Democratic ticket this time around.
“From backing Middle Eastern regime change to supporting an all-powerful presidency, Liz Cheney’s political career has been an endless affront to democratic values — the same values she now accuses Donald Trump, her former ally, of betraying,” leftist journalist Branko Marcetic writes. He points out that Cheney’s political positions, including adamant support for large-scale military interventions, have been virtually identical to those of her father. Liz Cheney “was particularly excited by Trump’s pledge to bring back torture, of which she was maybe the country’s most vocal and ardent defender. ‘Waterboarding isn’t torture,’ she once said, and this message was a frequent refrain for Cheney.”
Liz Cheney’s denunciations of Donald Trump will gain a lot of ink, pixels and airtime in 2024. And she might dissuade a relatively small number of Republicans from voting for him next fall. But many progressives could see her embrace by the Democratic leadership as evidence that the party has moved too far right to deserve their vote.
Norman Solomon is cofounder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His book “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine” was published in June.