Imagine... you spend your life working the corridors of power, and the only thing most people remember you for a moment of someone else's stupidity outside of work. I have little sympathy for anyone who helped build the modern GOP, but that's a fairly sad legacy.

Wobambo: That whole episode is a good example to point to whenever I'm feeling in a conspiratorial mood and start thinking the Dems are just fake opposition. Cause can you imagine the kind of ruckus conservatives would make if Harris shot someone in the face? It'd be nonstop, whole campaigns would be based on it in the midterms, etc. Darth Cheney shot a guy and nothing. They should change their mascot from a donkey to a guy in old timey sleeping robe and long stocking cap.

I imagine that they'd have to spend some time working out how to fit it into the "Dems are trying to take ur gunz" narrative and might let it slide so they can pretend that Harris wants to take them all because Dems are afraid of all the penis replacements their voters have built their personalities around. It might be counter-productive to admit that some on the left do actually own and use guns, they just want sensible rules to try and stop murderous psychopaths building an arsenal.

Dr. Nick Riviera: Wobambo: That whole episode is a good example to point to whenever I'm feeling in a conspiratorial mood and start thinking the Dems are just fake opposition. Cause can you imagine the kind of ruckus conservatives would make if Harris shot someone in the face? It'd be nonstop, whole campaigns would be based on it in the midterms, etc. Darth Cheney shot a guy and nothing. They should change their mascot from a donkey to a guy in old timey sleeping robe and long stocking cap.

This incident happened in early 2006.  By late 2006, Democrats had gained 6 Senate seats and 31 House seats to gain control of both houses of Congress.  At this point, Bush was a lame duck and Cheney had no chance of succeeding him, and six years of near-unobstructed Republican rule had lead to the quagmires in Iraq AND Afghanistan and neoconservative policies had started to tank the housing market, gas prices, the job market, and the economy in general.  Democrats didn't exactly need this incident to run on.

It would also have been astoundingly stupid to be attacking Cheney on this angle. It didn't have anything to do with policy, and focussing on it would have handed the Republicans yet another "they want to take your guns" narrative. Since it was confirmed as an accident and attacking him for the act of hunting would have been spun into Dems trying to ban hunting, and there was nothing to gain from such an attack in a positive manner.

This isn't "fake opposition", it's "acting like adults" and "focussing on what actually matters", and since it happened before the right wing completely lost their minds over a black man getting elected, it would have been very much out of place, not just playing the game on the right's terms.