The boys don’t want the GOP regulars to take even a moment, and reflect. Reflect on what has become of their [largely former] identities as supposedly… moral beings.

If asked, in a Confessional booth, or on their knees in the cathedral generally… to humbly reflect — reflect, on whether Tangerine and the MAGAts reflect their values… how will they answer?

That moment of self-awareness is what John and Paul and Scott and Steve want to bury before it might have a chance to rise from a smolder, to even a flickeringly small… flame.

For my money, EmptyWheel.net said it best this morning, in explaining why Kamala and Liz Cheney may be a potent “new Democratic vote finding” machine:

…[We must] give people who’ve come to hate that their own [GOP] party runs on dick stories and demeaning others, especially women and people of color, the courage to choose not to rejoin in that hatred out of partisan inertia or Republican self-identity.

Both Cheney and Harris have talked about power and powerlessness, and I can’t help but wonder if they’ve discussed Václav Havel’s essay on the power of the powerless while flying around together on a plane Liz’s father used to command, of the import of everyday people taking small acts of courage, the import of people like Dan refusing to join in Trump’s attacks on people that might include his five daughters (though, to be clear, Harris’ models of courage would come out of the Civil Rights movement, a culture in which she was raised).

Sykes described that Dan is a genuinely undecided voter. He sounded like a voter who had made his decision, but was asking for courage, was asking for Cheney and Harris to make it easier to sustain that courage. By 31 minutes into this town hall, he was even asking for, “something I could take with me to say, this sounds very good. We ought to at least listen to this.”

I don’t know whether it will work.

What I do know is that neither Harris nor Cheney are mistaking the enormity of the task, of trying to break the authoritarianism of a party that has overwhelmed voters with a blanket of disinformation and dehumanization.

They’re just trying to give people the courage to break out of a lifetime habit of voting for Republicans and instead to vote for the Constitution….

Indeed. And I for one am confident… it is working… one voter at a time, in private. A vote they will never admit to their own husband. But a vote they will… cast. And their daughters (and maybe even sons) will cast.

Cast for Kamala Harris.

Out.