In my experience, the result depends on a particular cable material. Some rubber imitating soft plastics are slowly decomposing in contact with adhesives from duct tape or electric tape. At some point of time nothing will help to restore such a plastic to a "dry" condition, it will stay "wet" forever. Moreover, the alcohol based cleaner may trigger some sort of other chemical reaction on that "goo", which will make plastic crumble.

Never tried WD-40 on those cables, though.