Leftist online hordes — the online equivalent of the gangs from A Clockwork Orange — have a ready-made answer to anyone expressing concern about Abdul El-Sayed campaigning with Hasan Piker: Liz Cheney. Kamala Harris campaigned with Liz Cheney in 2024. It was only two events — leftists make it sound like the pair rode coast-to-coast on a tandem bike — but still: Harris chose to campaign with the Republican congresswoman and daughter of the guy whom liberals used to delight in comparing to Darth Vader. And Harris’ choice does say something, but it says something completely different from what El-Sayed’s choice says.
My argument is not that Cheney is less-bad than Piker. I don’t play the “who was worse” game — I don’t get into abstract debates comparing the two great monsters of the 20th century: Adolf Hitler and Yoko Ono.1 That sort of discussion is inevitably about values, and debating values is pointless. It would be extra pointless to deploy that argument in an attempt to persuade hyper-online leftists, half of whom were toddlers during the Iraq War, and half of whom are Iranian bots whose IRGC commander ordered them to talk about Liz Cheney.
My argument is that campaigning with Cheney makes the opposite point about the candidate’s ideology than the point made by campaigning with Piker. Harris appearing with Cheney represented Cheney adopting Democratic views, not Harris adopting Republican views.
El-Sayed appeared with Piker a few times during the primary, including an Election Eve pool party that appeared to be the least-fun pool party to not include the phrase “we were unable to restore a pulse.” Primaries involve ideologically similar candidates, and candidates need ways to signal to voters what, precisely, they’re all about. El-Sayed campaigning with Piker — allegedly at El-Sayed’s request — signals some significant overlap between their beliefs. That signal is the entire point of the connection.
In contrast, the fact that Harris and Cheney have different beliefs is the whole reason they linked up. An endorsement from your own party means nothing — presidential candidates have a swarm of surrogates making them sound like a combination of Christ and Tom Brady, and that (rightfully) gets tuned out as partisan buzz. An endorsement from someone in the other party is different; it suggests that maybe the TV ads portraying one candidate as ten times worse than the fleas that carried the Black Death contain a grain of truth. In Cheney’s case, if even a Republican considers Trump beyond the pale, maybe some of what is being screeched about on MSNBC is true.
Consider the picture at the top of this article: Detail-oriented readers will detect a subtle, subliminal message that says “COUNTRY OVER PARTY”. I’ll draw on my years spent working in political messaging to suggest that the purpose of that message is to imply that voters should choose country over party. It tells Republicans who have qualms about Trump that it’s okay to vote for Harris. Ideological overlap is not only not implied; the absence of that overlap is being highlighted. The message is “Trump sucks and even Republicans agree”, not “In hindsight, the Iraq War ruled and we should do it again.”
Which means that campaigning with Cheney could make sense if you see politics as a process of achieving things that you believe will improve society. It makes no sense, though, if you see politics as a constant exercise in demonstrating your purity. To leftists, Liz Cheney is Haram, and by associating with her, Harris became unclean. But a better understanding of the dynamic indicates just how different their worldviews are.
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Apologies to Yoko — no Hitler is she. But she is the right plug-in for this joke.
Rick Wilson writing about Piker several weeks ago. This struck me as spot on:
He has also said America deserved 9/11, said he’d pick Hamas over Israel every time, and produces roughly six hours of unedited content a day, which is six hours a day of raw material for a hundred 30-second spots.
Here’s the professional read: the general election voter in Grand Rapids or Waukesha has no idea who this man is and will never watch a minute of Twitch. The average voter is 65, not 25.
That older, average voter will absolutely see the clip of him defending the 9/11 attack because the line is a perfect ad clip.
The clip requires no context and brooks no argument. It is an easy ad play for the MAGA GOP right now, and every Republican media firm in the country has the reel cut already. Piker won’t have to answer for it, but every Democratic candidate will.
I think what the pairing showed was the answer to the question "could there possibly be a candidate with worse political instincts and platform presence than Liz Cheney?" To which the obvious answer was, "why, yes, yes, there could be" and was on stage with her (but only two times).