2024 campaign

Yesterday was a year’s worth of a rising wave that came crashing down on Democratic hopes for 2024. They had hoped Republicans, motivated in part by constant lawfare attacks, would nominate Donald Trump — only to tear their party apart during the summer as denial of election eligibility in key states made clear he had no path to victory. They had hoped that by carefully managing Joe Biden, with access even more locked down than during the height of the pandemic, would survive questions of age and infirmity. And they had assumed the special counsel's report, while sure to include some damning equivalence with Trump’s stacks of Mar-a-Lago memorabilia, would be a story for a news cycle, easily survived and ultimately unmemorable.

How is Nikki Haley going to stage an upset in her home state’s Republican primary later this month? By appealing to a key conservative constituency: Saturday Night Live viewers. Haley appeared “live from New York” this evening in a cold open aping a Donald Trump town hall. (She even got to say the line!) Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Cockburn wondered last week what would happen to anti-MAGA voters after their chosen candidates dropped out of the race. Would they be able to return to the Trump fold? Though Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have reignited their months-long feud after the Florida governor dropped out Sunday, it’s last woman standing Nikki Haley who has drawn the bulk of Trump’s ire since. Taking a page from Kari Lake’s “get the hell out” playbook, Trump decreed on Truth Social Wednesday night that Haley donors will be blacklisted from his campaign.  “Anyone that makes a ‘Contribution’ to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and we will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL,” Trump posted.

The US primaries are over. Trump whacked Nikki Haley in New Hampshire; if she could win anywhere it was there, and she didn’t, so she’s done. Joe Biden didn’t even bother. The result? The most inadequate, boring primary season in living memory. North Korean elections are more unpredictable than this. For those of us who love politics, primaries are usually more interesting than the November general election. In the general, candidates run to the center; in the primary, they run to the edges, articulating a philosophy and galvanizing its constituency. You get contests of insider versus outsider (Clinton versus Obama, 2008); establishment versus radical (Clinton versus Sanders, 2016).

Bedford, New Hampshire The scene at Bedford High School is orderly but very crowded, requiring repeated requests from town moderator Brian Shaughnessy to curve the line of waiting voters round the corners and down hallways, creating a centipede-like chain of puffy coats and Timberlands chattering politely about how they've never seen so many people this time of day. The concerns about apathy after the low turnout in Iowa seems utterly absent here, formerly a Republican stronghold that has trended more Democrat in recent years. The crowd of sign-waving Nikki Haley supporters outside is chanting happily at the handful of Trump supporters, who are quieter and more grim.

“Many are called, but few are chosen.” That verse from Matthew (22:14) certainly applies to presidential aspirants. The latest to be called but not chosen is Ron DeSantis, who ended his campaign Sunday. Technically, he “suspended” the campaign, but that was simply to comply with campaign finance laws. In practice, the run is over.  The campaign was a brief, unsuccessful effort by a candidate who began with high promise, based on his success as Florida governor. He won that office, just barely, in 2018 after a decisive endorsement from Donald Trump. He was reelected overwhelmingly in 2022 against a well-regarded Democratic opponent.

Manchester, New Hampshire The Republican and Democratic primaries in New Hampshire are two sides of the same coin. New polls released this morning show the 45th and 46th president leading their respective fields comfortably. The latest Boston Globe/Suffolk survey has Donald Trump on 55 percent, with Nikki Haley on 36 percent and Ron DeSantis on 6 percent. The new CNN/UNH poll is a similar story: Trump on 50 percent, Haley on 39 percent, DeSantis on 6 percent.

Vintage news outlets, with lots of time to kill and space to fill, are desperately trying to say the Republican primary contest is still open. It’s not. Ron DeSantis’s campaign is already filled with embalming fluid. True, he finished second in Iowa, but that was his most favorable terrain, and he failed to win outright. DeSantis’s basic strategy was to draw away Trump voters by taking strong, socially conservative positions, such as banning abortions after six weeks in Florida. It didn’t convince primary voters. That spells the end for DeSantis nationally because it failed in a state where he spent a lot of time and money and where Republicans are very conservative. To invert the song, "New York, New York," if he can’t make it there, he can’t make it anywhere.

You’ve probably seen a clip of Cenk Uygur, founder and host of the progressive online news network the Young Turks. Whatever clip you watched, he was probably shouting. Rarely soft-spoken or caging for clarifications, Uygur is a perennially viral figure in the online drama of right versus left; a passionate progressive advocate who GOES OFF on CORRUPT ELITES and so forth, as such videos are titled, or a hyper-emotive epitome of the “triggered-lib,” who MELTS DOWN to the tune of hundreds of thousands of views for the online right. In the clips and tweets, Trump is a fascist, his supporters are racists, Israel is genocidal, “Establishment” Republicans are corrupt and establishment Democrats are no better.

Former president Donald Trump delivered a resounding 30-point victory in the Iowa Caucuses Monday night and, according to polls, seems likely to take New Hampshire as well. This is with the exception of one poll released Tuesday that shows Nikki Haley tied with Trump at 40 percent, but it has a sample size of only 600 voters and shows Haley winning with men and Trump winning with women. Seems unlikely. Provided Haley is unable to ride her establishment donor wave to victory in New Hampshire, then, the race will be all Trump by South Carolina. Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign proved to be a huge disappointment; as strategist Ryan Girdusky helpfully laid out in a recounting of his meetings with Team DeSantis over the past year.