More than 100 Republican former national security and foreign policy officials on Wednesday endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a joint letter, calling Donald Trump “unfit to serve” another term in the White House.
Former officials from the presidential administrations of Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, George W Bush and Donald Trump, as well as Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama voiced their support for Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in this November’s election. They were joined by some former GOP members of Congress.
The letter said: “We believe that the president of the United States must be a principled, serious, and steady leader.”
It went on: “We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as president and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be president.”
So is this helping or hurting Harris?
Being recognized as the only sane choice by people across the political spectrum and by nonpartisan organizations that rarely if ever endorse presidential candidates is generally going to be helpful for a campaign.
While there are plenty of people on Lemmy acting like this is a deal breaker, I highly doubt any of those people were ever going to vote for Harris.
And even if there is a nonzero number of votes lost to third parties or staying home because of this endorsement, those lost votes are almost certainly less likely to be in battleground states, and are only worth half as much as any independent or republican leaning votes that would otherwise have gone to Trump.