The garrulous Republican primary contained — for a brief moment — carnival barkers of the first order: the anti-woke crusader Ron DeSantis, anti-Trump crusader Chris Christie, anti-logic crusader Vivek Ramaswamy and anti-quit crusader Nikki Haley all hunted each other on stages to which the big prey never came to be hunted, as the presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump held himself out of the fracas and above the fray.
Now only Haley remains — and the top Republican challenger has become an amalgam of the aforementioned drop-outs, including her recent turn toward being, by necessity, anti-Trump like Christie, even if she arrives late to the hunt.
Vowing to stay in the race even after placing a distant second in the primary of her home state South Carolina, Haley encapsulated her reasons for staying in — boiling it down to a single sentence.
“I don’t think Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden,” Haley said in her concession speech after the SC drubbing. “Nearly every day, Trump drives people away.”
Haley: I don’t believe Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden. Nearly every day, Trump drives people away. Including with his comments just yesterday. pic.twitter.com/FIe7hJJ5Uh
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 25, 2024
With her statement, Haley expresses more certainty that any Democrat has yet had the temerity to exhibit. As Democrats wring their hands over excessive media coverage of Biden’s age and more measured coverage of his vulnerability on the border issue, the clear-eyed less nervous Haley is saying what she sees as obvious.
Haley, after all, took nearly 40% of the South Carolina vote in a state where both U.S. Senators stood with Trump. Critics say the fact that she outspent Trump and still lost is a factor, but given the huge advantage in media coverage Trump receives — so-called “earned media” — Haley wasn’t in front of SC voters more than the former president, despite the advertising outlay. Still, Haley received nearly 300K votes to Trump’s approximately 450K, while he runs essentially as an incumbent.
What Haley sees is the fact that 59% of her voters say they would not vote for Trump under any circumstances, a fact that would be insignificant is she were getting 5% of the vote. But the figure is highly significant because Haley collected nearly two-thirds the vote total Trump did in South Carolina.
Jessica: 59% of Nikki Haley’s voters say they won’t support Trump in the general election if he is the Republican nominee. That mirrors what we have been seeing in Iowa and New Hampshire pic.twitter.com/xlG7nEkQGC
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 25, 2024
In its primary coverage Axios writes a sentence that echoes Haley’s assertion. “If America were dominated by old, white, election-denying Christians who didn’t go to college,” the news outlet writes, “former President Trump would win the general election in as big of a landslide as his sweep of the first four GOP contests.”
Needless to say, as Haley understands from her time on the stump, America is not such a homogeneous bloc. And outside that Fox News demographic, Trump has major vulnerabilities, Haley insists, without even mentioning the legal peril Trump has faced and is facing.
The prediction game — even with Haley’s assertions backed by polls and data — is always fraught, especially so far out from November with so much on the calendar (including maybe court dates) between now and then. Despite Haley saying Trump will lose to Biden, both sides need to stay worried and vigilant if the comic TV writer Zach Bornstein’s dour prediction is true, as seems probable.
Bornstein writes: “…this election is going to be decided by some A.I. video in October and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
I hate that this election is going to be decided by some A.I. video in October and there’s nothing we can do about it
— Zack Bornstein (@ZackBornstein) February 17, 2024