Democrats Say Kamala Harris Ignored Their Dire Warnings on Liz Cheney

The Harris campaign’s tent may have indeed been too big.

Rolling Stone has reported that several Democratic aides warned Vice President Harris against campaigning so closely with former Representative Liz Cheney. Cheney may have voted to impeach Trump, but she’s also still the daughter of notoriously hawkish Iraq War orchestrator Dick Cheney, which most of America is far more familiar with.

“People don’t want to be in a coalition with the devil,” one anonymous campaign source told Rolling Stone in regard to Dick Cheney. But their warnings went unheeded, as a Harris staffer told them it’s not their place to question the campaign’s decisions.

The Harris campaign ran hard with Cheney in the last days of the campaign, appearing with her at rallies and on television appearances, as they urged women to vote in “secret” from the conservative men in their lives.

One Democratic strategist noted that campaigning with Cheney—and reaching out toward Republicans so enthusiastically in general—risked alienating the liberal base and wouldn’t even convince that many swing voters, if any. Donors and state party chairs also tried to convey this message to the Harris campaign, but to no avail. “We were told, basically, to get lost, no thank you,” they told Rolling Stone.

Campaigning with Cheney is just one of Harris’s many strategies that Democrats everywhere are questioning as the shock wears off.

Now that Kamala Harris lost an election by larger numbers than polls indicated, some liberals are questioning the election results and alleging fraud.

While nearly every Democrat and liberal was shocked by the election results coming on Tuesday and Wednesday, on social media, some people went overboard and sounded like upset Trump supporters in 2020. Mueller, She Wrote emerged as one of the more prominent liberal X (formerly Twitter) accounts critical of Trump during his first term, and initially expressed doubt over the results.

Other users on X saw potential nefarious activity in the vote count.

At one point, the hashtag #DoNotConcedeKamala trended on X.

One person who wanted Harris to contest the results referenced previous Democratic losses.

Many of these conspiracies are still continuing days later. Much of the objection appears to have to do with what Harris supporters perceived as less voter turnout, although this is somewhat unfounded, as turnout was up in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania that were the deciding factors in both 2020 and 2024. In all, 12 states exceeded previous records of turnout.

The next four years may go by very slowly if Harris supporters spend it contesting election results like many right-wingers did after Trump’s loss in 2020. Many of the right’s objections culminated in half-baked schemes and even vote tampering. And then there’s the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, where Trump’s MAGA diehards stormed the Capitol and attempted to halt the certification of the 2020 election.

Ultimately, that effort failed, resulting in more than 1,500 criminal charges and the deaths of some of the rioters. Hopefully, liberals and Harris supporters will come to their senses before any similar attempt. Besides, it will probably end up looking like this.

Montanans voted this week to send more Democrats to the state legislature, smashing a Republican supermajority in Big Sky Country.

Democrats gained nine more seats in the state’s House of Representatives, and two more in the state Senate, even as Montanans voted for conservative lawmakers to represent them in Washington.

It won’t be enough to break the Republican trifecta in Montana, but it will be enough to allow Democrats to block conservative bills and negotiate with Governor Greg Gianforte on issues that splinter the state’s conservatives, reported the Montana Free Press. Tuesday’s results, which were made possible in large part thanks to recently redrawn legislative maps, mean that Montana Democrats will hold 41 of 100 House seats as well as 18 out of 50 Senate seats in the 2025 Legislature.

State Representative Zooey Zephyr celebrated her re-election, writing in a statement that the win marked “historic gains” for Democrats in the traditionally red state.

“Despite a national election cycle that saw a 2-3 point shift towards Republicans, Montanans voted to send an additional nine Democrats to the state House of Representatives,” Zephyr wrote. “This is the largest gain for Democrats in over 30 years and represents a clear repudiation of the Republican’s extreme and undemocratic policies.”

Zephyr, the first and only openly transgender individual to be elected to Montana’s legislature, was censured and barred from the state House floor by the conservative caucus in 2023 for declaring that Republicans had “blood” on their hands for advancing an anti-trans bill.

“By shattering the Republican supermajority, Montanans have taken steps towards restoring accountability and genuine representation in our state government, and have shown that when Democrats are unwavering in our values, we are rewarded at the ballot box,” Zephyr added in her statement Friday.

The re-election of Donald Trump—a court-described rapist who famously said he could do anything he wants to women, including “grab ‘em by the pussy”—to the White House is having immediate ramifications for gender relations across the country, with young boys and men alike weaponizing the misogynistic rhetoric of the country’s soon-to-be 47th president against their female counterparts.

Across social media, young men are parroting white supremacist, Hitler fan, and far-right political pundit Nick Fuentes, who wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “Your body, my choice. Forever,” hours before the election was even called in Trump’s favor.

But the language has seemingly spilled from the digital ecosphere into daily life, as well, with parents reporting that young boys were caught leveraging the overtly objectifying language against girls in school.

School officials Minnesota issued a notice to parents on Friday that they were aware of “misogynistic… transphobic, and homophobic memes and messages” directed toward students in nearby school districts, including the phrase “your body, my choice.”

“Our country is facing a period of significant division, and the recent election has stirred a range of emotions. Although Hopkins Public Schools is nonpartisan, we recognize that the outcome of the election has and will continue to spark instances of racism, homophobia, and sexism in school communities across the nation and state, including here in Hopkins,” wrote Dr. Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed, superintendent of the Hopkins Public Schools system, in a letter that encouraged parents to reach out to local authorities if their children received such messages.

Social media is awash with similar but unverified anecdotes of boys throwing the horrific threat around their school hallways.

The election results have seemingly created a safe space for misogynists to crawl out of the woodwork. In Texas, activists celebrating Trump’s win overtook Texas State University’s San Marcos Campus, raising signs that read “women are property,” “homo sex is sin,” and lists that designated women and slaves as “types of property.”

At best, the comments are unsavory rage bait being regurgitated by people who are unaware of the ramifications or depth of the hyper-conservative, misogynistic belief. But they have the double sided effect of making women—who have had their reproductive rights systematically stripped away from them on a state-by-state basis since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022—feel incredibly unsafe on the precipice of an overwhelmingly far-right administration.

Pennsylvania Democrats will keep their majority in the state House, eking out an improbable victory after Kamala Harris failed to win the state (and most of the country).

Incumbent Democratic state Representative Frank Burns defeated Republican challenger Amy Bradley on Friday, allowing the Pennsylvania Democratic Party to maintain a slim, one-vote majority in the state House: 102 seats to 101. Burns was able to do this in Cambria County, a district that President-elect Donald Trump has won by at least 30 percent for the last three elections. In 2024, Trump beat Harris in the county by 46 points.

Burns, a conservative anti-abortion Democrat, has drawn the ire of the Pennsylvania GOP for some time now, as his seat was viewed as a vulnerable blue dot in a sea of red. But he was able to maintain his seat thanks to an influx of cash ($3.4 million from the Pennsylvania House Democratic Campaign Committee) and a potent advertising blitz to keep Democrats in control of the state House.

One ad the Burns campaign ran capitalized on his conservative views, stoking anti-immigration based fear and casting Bradley as against Trump’s draconian immigration plans. “President Trump supports secure borders and putting America first. But Amy Bradley doesn’t,” the ad stated menacingly. It was a successful tactic for Burns in his otherwise deep red district.

This win gives Democrats in Pennsylvania and beyond at least one thing to smile about in a despair-filled election cycle. The rest of the state was dominated by Republicans, as Trump won nationally, incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Casey lost to Republican Dave McCormick, and two blue congressional seats were also lost.