Cheney’s argument for Harris is a classical liberal version of the GOP’s “Flight 93 election” reasoning from 2016. It’s a basic matter of proper prioritizing: Agreement on norms trumps disagreement on policy. If you hand power back to Trump, he’ll crash the constitutional order. The conservative thing to do under the circumstances is to storm the cockpit by backing Harris, who’ll at least keep the plane in the air.

…

Nothing about Democrats’ Supreme Court “reform” nonsense is going to land Kamala Harris or Chuck Schumer under federal indictment for numerous felonies. Nor would anything prevent voters who dislike seeing Congress tinker with the judiciary from punishing Democrats severely at the polls. If, on the other hand, Trump had successfully connived, defrauded, and intimidated his way into remaining in power for a second term after losing an election, all institutional checks designed to make the executive accountable to the people he serves would have been defeated. What he did wasn’t just a difference in magnitude relative to what Democrats hope to do with the court—it was a difference in kind.

… Trump has actually tried to overturn a presidential election. For all her faults, Kamala Harris has done nothing remotely comparable. Right-wingers keen to draw civic equivalencies between the two have a knack for glossing over that. Both nominees have proposed certain indefensible ideas; only one has taken America to the brink to show that he means business.

Frankly, Trump is so manifestly unfit for office in ways that Harris isn’t that basing the case against him on his 2020 coup plot arguably does him a favor by overlooking what a full-spectrum cretin he is.

…

Defeat Trump, save the plane, and then get ready to start barking at Captain Kamala Harris on which way she should steer. It’s straightforward from here.

Nick Catoggio