While it is too early to take a victory lap at this point, my probability of winning is creeping higher.
I rarely watch news on TV, particularly the evening news programs on the cable channels. I do watch the local channels in the morning, mainly to get the sports and weather. My wife watches the Evening News Hour on PBS as she prepares dinner, and if I am in the kitchen with her, I’ll watch that. I realize that Amna Nawaz, Geoff Bennett, and their PBS colleagues are Bolsheviks, but I enjoy watching the Jonathan Capehart/David Brooks segment on Fridays.
I did watch the Haley-DeSantis debate on CNN last night. I started watching about 15-20 minutes before the debate started—CNN had a panel, and the participants discussed the impact of Christie’s withdrawal on the upcoming primaries. It was interesting to watch them struggle with the notion that yesterday’s development improves the non-Trump candidates’ chances. They tried so hard to find reasons why the consolidation resulting from Christie’s departure is not a major development. Trump is a lock, blah, blah…
It seems to me that the pundits, excluding the Fox people, are really rooting for Trump, (1) because they look forward to savaging him during the campaign; and (2) he would lose to Biden. A Trump-Biden race would mean higher ratings. Also, they don’t want to cover a Haley landslide. Looking sad and lamenting a Democrat loss on election night is tough—2016 was enough. “Boo hoo hoo. Why don’t the American people think the way we tell them they should think?”
A couple of months ago I posted a comment to the effect that I thought neither Trump nor Biden would be their party’s candidate in 2024 (I added a caveat that I was aware that my prediction could be based upon wishful thinking or naivete). I continue to hold to my prediction, although I am less convinced that the Democrats will have the cojones to boot Biden/Harris off the ticket. I am more confident that, if DeSantis were to withdraw after a third-place finish in Iowa, Haley would cruise in NH and SC.
If I am wrong, and Trump is the GOP candidate, it’s seppuku for me. I would stage the event in GOP campaign headquarters and have eaten a peppery lamb vindaloo from the Star of India an hour or so before.
The Trump News Network. All Trump. All the time.
They were openly cheering for him (while pretending to scold) because he is a ratings darling. The golden goose.
They have the ability to shut off his oxygen--attention--and they simply cannot do it.
Because I feel like something, anything should have indicated an erosion in GOP support for Trump. Not a single poll.
Granted voters don't have to be afraid of him, but apparently the RNC does. Until something breaks the fear spell, the GOP is basically dead. Seppuku indeed.
This is also sad, because without two healthy parties, the Dems wither in their own regard.
make this a highly unlikely scenario, even thought it would be the correct move.
The Economist lambasted the Democrats for running Biden again, while noting how the party is basically pot committed and must push forward.
Back in 2023 Mr Biden could—and should—have decided to be a one-term president. He would have been revered as a paragon of public service and a rebuke to Mr Trump’s boundless ego. Democratic bigwigs know this. In fact before their party’s better-than-expected showing in the midterms, plenty of party members thought that Mr Biden would indeed stand aside. This newspaper first argued that the president should not seek re-election over a year ago.
Unfortunately, Mr Biden and his party had several reasons for him fighting one more campaign, none of them good. His sense of duty was tainted by vanity. Having first stood for president in 1987 and laboured for so long to sit behind the Resolute desk, he has been seduced into believing that his country needs him because he is a proven Trump-beater.
Likewise, his staff’s desire to serve has surely been tainted by ambition. It is in the nature of administrations that many of a president’s closest advisers will never again be so close to power. Of course they do not want to see their man surrender the White House in order to focus on his presidential library.
Here the Leader discusses the challenges of selecting a new candidate:
Were he to withdraw today, the Democratic Party would have to frantically recast its primary, because filing deadlines have already passed in many states and the only other candidates on the ballot are a little-known congressman called Dean Phillips and a self-help guru called Marianne Williamson. Assuming this was possible, and that the flurry of ensuing lawsuits was manageable, state legislatures would have to approve new dates for the primaries closer to the convention in August. A series of debates would have to be organised so that primary voters knew what they were voting for. The field could well be vast, with no obvious way of narrowing it quickly: in the Democratic primary of 2020, 29 candidates put themselves forward.
The chaos might be worth it if the party could be sure of going into the election with a young, electable candidate. However, it seems equally possible that the eventual winner would be unelectable—Bernie Sanders, say, a self-declared democratic socialist who is a year older than Mr Biden. More likely, the nomination would go to Kamala Harris, the vice-president. Ms Harris has the advantage of not being old, though it says something about the Democratic Party’s gerontocracy that she will be 60 in November and is considered youthful.
Unfortunately she has proven to be a poor communicator, a disadvantage in office as well as on the stump. Ms Harris is a creature of California’s machine politics and has never successfully appealed to voters outside her state. Her campaign in 2020 was awful. Her autocue sometimes seems to have been hacked by a satirist. Immigration and the southern border—a portfolio she handles for Mr Biden—is Mr Trump’s strongest issue and the Democrats’ weakest. Ms Harris’s chances of beating Mr Trump look even worse than her boss’s.
caveat that polls are a snapshot in time, It is difficult to see a path to victory for her.
Going through the states in order of their primary / caucus with Trump's current poll number. Obviously margin of error and solidifying the oppisition around 1 candidate can change the narrative but Haley needs to do more than consolidate the opposition. It is entirely possible the fact he will be in and out of courtrooms the next 60 days will turn voters but I think most of the people who that will affect have already chosen someone else.
Iowa 52
NH 42
NV 73
SC 52
MI 64
GA 55
MS. 48-61
AZ. 58
FL. 59
IL. 65
right now are NH and maybe - maybe - SC. No one else is really thinking about who they are voting for. If Haley wins NH there will be a dramatic shift as the aura of invincibility is taken from Trump.
Relatedly, I don't know how much voters outside of NH have paid attention to him recently. He's become increasingly unstable and I have no doubt that instability will continue to increase and will do so exponentially if he loses NH.
Edit: I'm not counting Iowa because (a) there are no votes, it's a caucus and (b) it has been consigned to irrelevance because of its own bungling and an increasing awareness that it measures nothing relevant.
Past winners include:
Rick Santorum
Mike Huckabee
Ted Cruz
voter's views on Trump are baked in pretty well. I dont know that many of his voters are with him because they view him as a winner so I dont think that he will lose much support if he is not seen as the inevitable candidate. I do think where it presents an opportunity for Haley is to get the DeSantis people who view Trump as their second choice. Hard to say if they were picking Trumpa s their second choice because they prefer him or because they assumed he would be the nominee if it isnt DeSantis.
This post from the Cook report is interesting. The electorate in Iowa and SC look very similar but NH not so much in that they are more Republican, Conservative and Evangelical. This is what they have to say on her Christie bump. Full post linked below.
"Even if Christie were to embrace Haley, it wouldn’t solve her bigger challenge, which as I noted earlier is her inability to appeal to a more “traditional” Republican primary audience like the one she’ll see in South Carolina. The CNN/UNH poll, for example, finds Haley winning almost 50% of those New Hampshire voters who define themselves as independent or Democratic, but just 27% among Republicans. Among moderates, who are a much smaller share of the South Carolina and Iowa electorate, Haley is getting 55%. But among conservatives, who make up a larger share of the South Carolina electorate than the New Hampshire electorate, Haley gets just 20%, compared to Trump’s 60%. "
The other item that will be interesting to see is what she does if Trump does come to debate her. She has not gone after him in any real way up to this point but if it is one v one you sort of need to do that. How does she continue to praise his accomplishments but say he should not have a second term? How does she say he cant beat Biden without explicitly saying the 2020 election was not stolen?
I am in the middle of Liz Cheney's book and basically the problem Haley will confront is the very one the party has been kicking down the road sinc 2015 do you confront Trump for what he is or just try and ignore him and believe he will go away. While they keep losing general elections, the Trumop wing of the party has done pretty well in primaries even since 2020 so I am skeptical this time will be different.
however have a few reasons to think Haley has a shot. First, I totally get what you are saying about views about Trump being baked in, but one of those views is Trump is inevitable, and people in later primary states almost always poll strongly in favor of the frontrunner until that image is shattered. Look at 2008 - Obama was way behind Clinton nationally, Clinton was as well known a candidate as there could be, and fwiw I personally had all sorts of people telling me it was a lost cause. Then he won Iowa - which mattered back then - and the rest is history.
Second, assuming Haley is in it to win it, I have to think she's going to open fire on Trump once it is a one-on-one race.
Third, I think there have to be enough Rs who want to beat Biden. They have to know Trump is the weaker candidate and it's not a close call.
Fourth, I am convinced Trump is going to do something bonkers that will actually hurt his support if he loses NH. He has truly become a raving lunatic.
she will go hard after him. The entire reason no one has gone hard after him is because the party loves him. Christie and Hutchinson went after him and neither of them made it to Iowa. She still needs all his suporters to compete in the general.
Obviously with him off the ballot turnout will likely drop but keep in mind there were at least 11 million people who did not vote in 2016 that watched him for four years and said I need four more years of that. The actual number is likely higher when you account for Trump - Biden or Clinton-Trump voters but at a minimum it was 11 million more votes in 2020.
And it may be the influence of the Tim Alberta book being fresh in my mind but I dont know that she gets the evangelical crowd excited in the same manner or if they walk from another RINO. That book opened jy eyes to another world out there that is crazy and committed.
She is becoming more popular amongst Republican women, and if he goes after her like the obnoxious cad, misogynist ogre he always turns into, that may cost him some support. She is also far more well-versed on the issues than he is. I'd love to see her debate him if his testicles ever dropped.
Didn't cost him much in the general. There's no cult of personality swelling behind Haley.
I think this thread is a bunch of old school Republicans wishing that this were the pre Trump party. The base is more populist, more blue collar, and more isolationist than it was even in 2016. As much as anything Haley's issue is that her base is a Minority in the party. That minority is just over represented in the social circles board members talk to.
In simplest terms, the angry white uneducated guys (and some women) aren't going to leave Trump for an Indian woman. If we pretend those folks aren't the majority of today's republican party, then the conservative intellectuals can debate how the rest of the party votes.
Going after her won't hurt him in the slightest ... have we forgotten his "locker room talk" that didn't move the needle?
If trump is eligible and in presentable health, he will be the republican nominee regardless of if it is 1-on-1 or not.
Another relatively close election and we're in decent health... I do wonder if he'd get nominated in 2028.
He'd go down in history a slightly more successful William Jennings Bryant
Is that every time Bryant ran he got 1 to 2% less of the vote.
practicing Christian (of the Catholic variety, so the many of the "Christian" nationalists would not think I am a Christian, but still...), one of the most disgraceful and, in my view, damaging things to Christianity as a whole in America has been the explicitly anti-Christian views and stances taken by these "Christian" nationalists.
There aren't all that many things I would say Jesus was 100% clear about. But he was absolutely, 100% clear when he addressed lying and how to treat your enemy and sinners. Yet these so-called Christians have embraced lying as the means to their end, and their end has largely become punishing both their enemies and those they view as sinners.
number of people who might change your view of evangelicals and politics.
the page not because I am a liberal and he takes the evangelical right to task. I think it was illiuminating to read about the schism and to see not just the mega churches but also the smaller churches we have neverr heard of that are likely the most radicalized. It did also cause me to pause and think about my poltics, my faith and the intersection of the two.
Well wrritten book by a person whose background was uniquely suited to writing it in a way that examine the issues in a way that was both respectful and honest.
His supporters are the loudest, and most passionate. I also think that the silent majority of Never Trumpers and moderates will show up to vote against him.
All of this reminds me of pre-game speculation that occurs routinely in sports. USC will dominate Texas. Michigan is scared of Alabama. etc.
Once the votes are counted, I'm am expecting 2016 level of shock and confusion when Trump comes up short.
If she can pull off New Hampshire and parlay that into a South Carolina win, making Trump look beatable can change the equation.
That's obviously very optimistic.
One won both states, and that was Ford.
If she flops in the early primaries the race will be over quickly. But if she gets a couple of early victories it's a whole new ballgame. Hell, she might even be able to force him into showing up for a debate.
Assume she finishes second in Iowa and wins NH which seems likely SC is up next. Trump is at 52% there. The question is where to the DeSantis supporrters go. Polling to date shows a higher % with Trump as their second choice. If the Haley winning NH does not change that it is difficult to see any momentum with Michigan (64%) Georgia (55) and Mississippi (48-61) the next ones with polling.
Idaho and North Dakota are in the middle of those but I could not find any data for those states.
With Christie out, the chances for a win should be there. If she gets crushed, I think it's game over. If it's close, closer than the expected blowouts in other states, that could be helpful but maybe not enough.
Winning the first primary (as opposed to a caucus) could be a game-changer.
This is not an endorsement.
Elizabeth Warren as the Democratic nominee.
Just sayin'.
Hell, even if those things happen…
What if she were to win the nomination? How would Trump react? He'd claim it was rigged and run on a third party ticket. How would she win?
If Haley won, his gut reaction would be to sabotage Haley, but he'd be raising his risk of dying in jail.
That said, Trump is still the clear and overwhelming favorite for the nomination.
was broken. It won't matter if Trump bleats about another "stolen" election. The truth is 2020 wasn't stolen and the 2024 nominating process won't be either. So if she wins, it means he lost most of his support.
Having said that, he hasn't lost any of his support and will win no matter what. Not even death or prison will stop him. Well death might. I'd say his supporters would not believe he really died, but Trump would not be left to whip them up.
That is, hardcore MAGA who only vote if Trump is on the ballot. I don’t know how big that contingent is, but it does exist.
The link discusses the case and cites several examples of minor party presidential candidates who were defeated in presidential primaries for another party but ran for another party in the general election. Lyndon LaRouche and John Anderson are two examples that were cited.
The link is from Ballotpedia from an article in Ballot Access News, which seems relatively neutral. Whether sore loser laws could take effect or not, Trump would be able to sabotage the chances of a GOP candidate.
from him did not matter if it was the Apprentice at the Emmy's or Ted Cruz winning Iowa in 2016.
I dont think he needs to run as a third party to cause problems. Unless he decides he needs Haley to win in order to get a pardon, I would be shocked to see him change his ways. If he goes down complaining about the RINO's stealing the election from him I think the damage could be just as significant.
The bigger issue is whether the polling on second choices is accurate. If it is then yes Haley gets a bump from Christie but the polling shows Trump getting a bigger bump from DeSantis.
but he wouldn’t need to be on the ballot to do the Republican candidate in.
third party. Especially after Haley beats him in the Republican primary.
Most Christie voters did not have Trump as second choice. He's been an anti-Trump attack dog since the inception of his campaign.
All bets are off. Trump doesn't hit 50% in GOP polls in most places, and outside of MAGA his support is tepid. He won in 2016 because of winner-take-all primaries, and MAGA is enough to get him there with split opposition but not if it's one-to-one.
I also don't think Christie dropping out helps DeSantis at all.
Many state polls. Desantis voters also prefer Trump to Haley.
538 poll of polls has Trump at 61.3% nationally. Haley is at 11% and Christie between 3 and 4%.
Which I am not watching - I’d rather stick needles in my eyes - I retract thinking there is any possibility of Haley beating Trump.
Why? Because she and DeSantis are going after each other and not Trump. You know, the front-runner. Dumbest strategy ever.
I think they’re both running for Vice President. In fact I’ve thought Haley was doing that from day 1.
Trump is leading most polls by 40%. I wish I saw something else.
Nobody will be talking about it.