Kamala Harris’s most controversial campaign strategy has a clear explanation.

On Monday, with 15 days until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris toured the three most crucial swing states in the contest — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — with former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney. The Harris campaign’s emergence of a conservative surrogate whose last name Democrats have long equated with villainy may frustrate some on the left.

Harris and Cheney would be among the first to admit that they have little in common other than not wanting Donald Trump to be president again. But in their campaign, along with other work that Cheney has done for the Harris campaign, they are on a very specific mission: to convert some of the last bits of surplus voters to land on Harris’ side.

Passes by public opinion poll data and public acknowledgments from the Harris campaignthe election is excruciatingly close, with Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in particular on a knife’s edge. Although the vast majority of the country has made up its mind — and decided it long ago — there are still small pockets of voters in the seven swing states who are undecided either between Harris and Trump, or between voting and not voting themselves. . In particular, these voters include young men, black men, Hispanic men, college-educated suburban women, and non-college-educated white women. We’re talking about groups that make up a percentage point of the electorate here, a point there. In their restless last few weeks, the Harris campaign has aggressively micro-targeted specific groups with messages tailored to them as they try to find the last few, likely deciding votes from an otherwise deadlocked contest.

“Our persuasion and unsettled universe spans gender, race, age and education levels. But one thing they have in common is that they are very hard to reach,” Meg Schwenzfeier, the Harris campaign’s chief analytics officer, said in a statement to Slate. “They don’t see traditional news platforms or other programming with a large mainstream audience. So to talk to them we need to take a layered approach – we need to be on TV, non-traditional platforms, door knockers, billboards, digital ads, mail – everything, really. This is a real advantage we think we have over the Trump campaign – we’re reaching the last undecided voters wherever they are – in a way that the Trump campaign doesn’t have the infrastructure to do.”

Cheney has been hired to help with what the Harris campaign sees as one of the relatively “larger” remaining blocs that can be persuaded. It’s Republican, college-educated, suburban women (and some men), a group that has moved heavily in the Democratic direction in the Trump era but that the Harris campaign believes could be swayed further. The main thing Cheney said at one of those rallies was meant to make them feel comfortable with what can feel like a transgressive act.

“I certainly have a lot of Republicans who will tell me, ‘I can’t be public,” Cheney said Monday. “They care about a whole range of things, including violence, but they want to do the right thing. And I just want to remind people that if you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and never have to say a word to anybody.”

The prevailing campaign jargon for what Cheney is doing here is trying to create a “permission structure” for Trump-weary Republicans to make the final leap to Harris. Cheney—or to use another current news figure, John Kelly— serve as validators and provide reassurance to like-minded voters that it is okay to support a Democrat. If Liz Cheney can bring herself to do itin other words, you can too.

Will this work? Who knows. Need it? Probably.

While the campaign is working to persuade this group of voters to choose Harris over Trump, there is another multi-front campaign to convince some to choose Harris instead of not voting at all.

There is a pronounced gender gap in this election, which is not particularly surprising in a race between a man and a woman, while abortion rights are a central issue in the campaign. Much has been written about the Harris campaign’s softness among black men, Hispanic men, and young men in general, a downcast cohort without much trust in the political process.

Much of the Democrats’ declining vote share among young men and men of color was baked into the cake before Harris ever set foot in the race; these tectonic plates have been change a little more every four years. Harris still wants to, though win Black men and young men, and so it is crucial that the votes she loses over 2020 in margin be offset by turnout.

The Harris campaign is not going to reach these men, she has to show up with additional appearances on The view. To meet them where they are, Harris’ team has advertised in sportsbooks and fantasy sports sites; on video game sites like IGN; and during college football, NBA, NFL and MLB playoff broadcasts. Tim Walz has been on The Rich Eisen Show to talk about the Minnesota Vikings. There was some talk that Harris may appear on the granddaddy of all targeted male media efforts –The Joe Rogan Experiencethe most popular podcast in the country – even though it hasn’t come to fruition. (She has, however, appeared on The Howard Stern Show and Charlamagne tha Gods The Breakfast Clubboth of which have large male audiences.)

Trump, meanwhile, will emerge on Rogan, appearing seemingly every day on a new young, male-focused influencer show. Some Democrats tend to laugh at these stupid interviews, the ones where Trump asking what cocaine does or comes in one custom Cybertruck. But they might laugh less if they give Trump’s margin of victory.

You could say that the more niche the target groups are, the tighter the choice. There’s a good chance your cousin in one of seven swing states, who doesn’t care about any of this but is bombarded with targeted advertising every time he goes to set his fantasy lineup, could decide the election. The same with his mother. Know, in these hectic last few weeks, that if you see something that seems unusual at the end of a campaign — like a day of hanging around with Liz Cheney — there’s probably reams of campaign research that points to it necessary to move at the moment.

That doesn’t mean it will work.