Politix
Politix
See Ya Later, Validator
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See Ya Later, Validator

Why Kamala Harris is courting influential center-right Republicans, and why its making some progressive critics so unhappy.
5

This week, Matt and Brian take a big-picture view of Republicans for Kamala, including:

  • Why the Emerging Democratic Majority thesis of the aughts and early 2010s made people assume that outreach to Republicans would lead to betrayal on policy grounds.

  • The academic basis for Harris to view support from influential conservatives as a critical safeguard against Democratic backsliding.

  • How a more concerted Trump-accountability effort at the outset of Joe Biden’s presidency might have mooted the whole need for a unified front.

Then, behind the paywall, a more nuts-and-bolts look at how this kind of third-party validation works in practice: Are Harris’s critics really mystified by why Democrats keep citing state-level Republican praise for the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene? Would we be talking about January 6 so much, all of a sudden, were it not for the fact that it drove so many influential Republicans into the anti-Trump camp? If this kind of thing is suspicious, or of dubious value, why is Trump trying so hard to pretend Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Elon Musk reflect significant Democratic defections?

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Politix
Politix
Politix is a weekly podcast about the 2024 election from Brian Beutler, Matthew Yglesias, and some occasional guests. We’ll have some good-faith disagreement, some points of consensus, and an overall effort to focus on what’s really at stake in November. Subscribe for new episodes each Wednesday and listen wherever you get your podcasts.