Chris Hayes has faith that American voters “want to be a democracy – and not a Donald Trump dictatorship,” he told viewers Thursday night.
Kamala Harris and Republican Liz Cheney appeared together in Ripon, Wisconsin, where the former GOP Congresswoman endorsed the Democratic candidate and admitted this year will be the first she’s ever crossed party lines. “Personally, I don’t agree with a lot of Liz Cheney’s politics. I imagine a lot of you watching feel the same way. Fact, that’s a basically I oppose just about everything she’s advocated for in the course of her public life, except one thing,” Hayes told viewers.
You can watch the clip from Chris Hayes in the video below.
That one thing is that Cheney “is someone who put her whole political career her future in the Republican party, a party to which she was born, right and heiress, in a sense, she put it on the line for American democracy.”
The “health and the future of American democracy” is on the ballot this year, he added, “But just because something is important, like whether we’re going to be a democracy or not, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good campaign fodder.”
There are signs that remaining a democracy is a concern for a lot — and perhaps even most — Americans, he continued. Hayes reported that while President Biden’s approval rating steadily declined between January 2021 and September 2022, it began to “reverse course” that summer.
“Now this trend came in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision at the end of June, overturning Roe v Wade. Of course, over the course of June, July, millions of Americans also watch eight hearings held by the January 6 committee. And so the midterm elections approaching President Biden, Democrats saw where the mood of the country was, and they definitely ran on those issues, abortion and particular democracy,” he said.
The result was that Democrats won important victories during the 2022 midterms. Voters were concerned about ensuring the United States did not slide into a dictatorship, and “I think if you force the issue in those terms, the pro democracy side wins,” Hayes concluded.
Harris and Cheney spoke in Ripon, the city where the Republican Party was founded in 1854 — and that is nestled in a crucial swing state for the Democrats.
“Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our Capitol, to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name, and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself,” Cheney told the crowd. “I don’t care if you are a Democrat or Republican or an independent, that is depravity and we must never become numb to it.”
