A 'Big Tent' or an unprincipled block against progressives?
Has Cheney become a Democrat? Or have Democrats become Neocons?
Some of my liberal Democrat friends are delighted over the prospects of sharing a “big tent” with neocons like the Cheneys as they take on Trump in November. As one told me today, “I’ll take whatever help we can get.”
But I think we have to start asking ourselves, what are our party’s leaders doing that is so brutal and inhumane that a lowlife war criminal, torturer, and profiteer like Dick Cheney would endorse them?
I say, them instead of us because it’s become obvious that as the party leadership has tacked to the right, the gap between them and the Democratic base has widened, not just over its support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza but over other issues as well (eg., immigration and the border wall, national healthcare, and more).
I saw this coming, as did many other party watchers and political writers over the past two decades. The Democrats’ right-center coalition strategy, to the exclusion of its young progressive and people-of-color, anti-war base, was evident at the DNC when neocons like former Bush CIA director Leon Panetta (who covered up the use of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo) were given the podium in prime time while Palestinian or anti-war speakers were banned.
Back in 2022, author Sarah Kendzior made the following predictions on her Gaslit Nation podcast:
“I’m gonna wrap this up with a warning, which is that there is a new plan for our already broken two-party system. The plan is to have two parties. One, a batshit crazy MAGA party led by Trump or DeSantis that will bulldoze your rights. And the second one will be a far-right “respectable” party led by Liz Cheney that will also bulldoze your rights. They will call the Cheney party the Democrats and pretend that a creeping capitulation to a right-wing agenda is some kind of act of healing bipartisanship.”
“When I mentioned this possibility on Twitter, someone wrote to me, ‘Liz Cheney is not becoming a Democrat.’ And I replied, ‘I agree. The Democrats are becoming Cheneys.’”
What I wrote here in January 2022.
When I think of Dick Cheney (I try not to), I recall his curt response in the Spring of 2008, to polls showing growing opposition to the Iraq invasion. When asked about polls showing that two-thirds of Americans opposed the war, Cheney replied, "So?"
"You don't care what the American people think?" ABC News' Martha Raddatz asked the vice president. "You can't be blown off course by polls," said Cheney.
Once in office, Cheney became one of the most divisive and reviled vice presidents in US history. Maybe party leaders are hoping that those thousands of young potential voters, the ones who are back protesting on hundreds of campuses this fall, are too young to remember.
It was Cheney, the man from Halliburton, who pulled the strings behind Bush and engineered the invasion of Iraq. He was a war criminal who encouraged the torture of prisoners, especially the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique. His company was the biggest war profiteer and Cheney himself made millions off the war.
He attacked former President Barack Obama calling him the "worst president of my lifetime" and he questioned the Republican bona fides of former Secretary of State Colin Powell for endorsing Obama.
He endorsed Trump's successful run for the presidency in 2016 but lost faith in Trump after the Jan. 6. 2021 insurrection.
Harris' campaign quickly jumped to thank Cheney for his vote, with campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon saying in a statement that Harris "deeply respects his courage to put country over party.”
As for Liz Cheney, she has a history of anti-labor union-busting going back decades.
In her first interview after the DNC, Kamala Harris announced that she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet if she was elected. Let’s just hope she doesn’t make Cheney her Secretary of Labor.
Democrats obviously feel more comfortable standing with Dick or Liz Cheney, than they do with progressive Democrats. And that, my friends, is their Achilles' heel.
Mike, Thank you for the short history of Dick Cheney. How could we forget? The waterboarding was so egregious that we chose to put it out of sight. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a turning point in American foreign policy, but what is going on behind the scenes? Please keep us up to date!
Mike, Cheney, together with Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, led the greatest exposure the country has seen against Trump's attempted coup. It costs her her seat in Congress. During the proceedings that day, her Dad helped her with personal armed security against the fascists, which she needed. She is everything you say she is, with one exception. She defends the Constitution against fascists, and is organized all she can to vote Kamala to defeat them in Nov. Would you repudiate her effort? If so, we have very different ideas about the strategy and tactics. You can denounce her conservation, warmongering politics til the cows come home. But do you share her assessment of Trump as a clear and present danger? At the moment, we have a broad front under the Dem tent, from Chomsky to Cheney. We don't have to shut up about anyone in it. We exercise our independence and initiative. I'm surprised I even have to argue this point with you.