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'A Huge Misstep': Ilhan Omar Blames Harris Loss on Flaunting Liz Cheney Endorsement

Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
November 26, 2024

Anti-Semitic congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) slammed Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign for touting former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney's (Wyo.) support instead of appealing to its progressive base, saying that Cheney's support was a major reason for Harris's humiliating loss.

Harris's decision to campaign on Cheney's endorsement was "a huge misstep," especially in states with large Arab-American populations, such as Michigan, Omar said in an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune. Cheney is a strong supporter of Israel and the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, who is despised by many progressives.

"You have the one name for my generation and generations younger than me that is synonymous with war," Omar, who has a long history of anti-Semitic rhetoric, said of Liz Cheney. "It does say something about where your priorities are even if those are not your priorities."

Cheney was central to Harris's attempt to brand herself as a moderate, with the pair holding events in the "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Harris lost all three states on Election Night.

The far-left congresswoman is not the only progressive who thinks Cheney contributed to Harris's loss. Our Revolution, the liberal activist group born out of socialist Vermont senator Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign, publicly blasted Harris last month for touting "endorsements from figures like Liz Cheney and other Republicans."

"We've seen time and time again that it is not a winning strategy," Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese said at the time, arguing that the Harris campaign was "ignoring the bread-and-butter issues that matter most to working families."

Trump won over 80 percent of voters who said their families' financial situations were worse off than four years earlier, according to CNN exit polls.