Kuttner on TAP: Liz Cheney Product Warning Label

Liz Cheney has won the hearts of many liberals because of her outstanding role in the January 6th hearings. Having lost her own House seat, she now has one goal—to keep Donald Trump from the White House.

The Boston Globe describes her as every Democrat’s favorite Republican. Some progressives are relishing the prospect of Cheney running as a third-party spoiler. But that gambit could backfire in several respects.

For starters, let’s remember who Liz Cheney is. Substantively, she’s still a right-wing Republican who has supported policies of endless war; and until she became a born-again constitutionalist, she voted with Trump 90 percent of the time.

Even knowing that she was about to lose her seat, Cheney did not alter her views. She voted against banning assault weapons, voted for letting veterans die from illnesses created by toxic burn pits by voting against the PACT Act, and voted for denying climate science when she voted against the Inflation Reduction Act.

In her crusade against Trump, it doesn’t work for Cheney to run as a Republican. She’d serve as a foil to energize Trump’s base and help him win the nomination.

Her more logical path is as an independent. At first glance, that course sounds like a winner—for democracy and for Democrats. Cheney takes 10 or even 20 percent of the vote, mostly from the Republican, and throws the election to the Democrat. But be careful what you wish for.

Cheney has become such a heroic figure that she could also take plenty of votes from the Democrat. If it’s Trump against Biden, she’s a far more effective debater than either, and more than two decades younger.

The dynamics of three-way races are inherently volatile and unstable. In 1992, when Ross Perot ran as an independent, there were several weeks when Perot was outpolling both Clinton and George H.W. Bush.

In the end, Perot got 19 percent of the vote and threw the election to Clinton. But it easily could have broken the other way. Had he been a little less crazy, Perot might have won.

In 2016, an outsider-insider celebrity businessman candidate even crazier than Perot did win. And in 2000, independent Ralph Nader pulled only 2.7 percent but gained just enough votes to tip the election to George W. Bush.

Cheney is a widely admired figure at a time when voters are hostile to both parties. In a true three-way, almost anything could happen. Cheney might even win.

Alternatively, if she took some states but ran third, Cheney might throw the election to the Republican House. That ironic echo of Trump’s January 6th strategy would be grotesque.

My wager is that Cheney will run as an independent—and as she gets energized by the excitement of the race, she will run to win. Though it’s a long shot, here’s the worst irony of all: Should Cheney win, we might rescue democracy only to be back to the right-wing corporate rule that left working people disgusted with democracy in the first place.