2024 campaign

There’s something in the water in New York’s 3rd district, which continues to pump out interesting candidates for Congress. Of course, we had George Santos. Enough said there. Then after the colorful Santos was expelled from Congress in a historic vote, Republicans nominated Mazi Pilip, an IDF veteran and Ethiopian immigrant, who lost in a special election to Democrat Tom Suozzi, who is... vastly less interesting than his GOP counterparts. But now, Suozzi could face another colorful Republican — Bill Cotter, formerly known as Barstool Sports’s Billy Football, who joined the race a few weeks ago, and has been gathering the requisite number of signatures to appear on the primary ballot in June.

NBC News’s decision to ditch Ronna McDaniel after the hissy fit thrown collectively by Chuck Todd, Joe Scarborough, Jen Psaki, Nicolle Wallace, Rachel Maddow and more should be more than enough evidence to support a commitment from the Republican National Committee and its new leadership: there is no working with NBC. Not on debates, not on town halls, not even on campaign season interviews. There’s no point in creating content for a network that finds even the most generic Republican figure so vile and scary that they don’t even want her in the building. Obviously this is an unenforceable commitment, and someone like Chris Christie or Larry Hogan will assuredly ignore it.

President Joe Biden is the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party after his victory in the Georgia primary pushed him passed the threshold of 1,968 delegates. Donald Trump also passed the threshold of 1,215 delegates to become the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, following his triumphs in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington. "It is my great honor to be representing the Republican Party as its Presidential Nominee," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Our Party is UNITED and STRONG, and fully understands that we are running against the Worst, Most Incompetent, Corrupt, and Destructive President in the History of the United States. Millions of people are invading our Country, many from prisons and mental institutions of other Countries.

President Joe Biden has shamelessly abandoned his chief campaign promise to unite the country. It became clear quickly into his presidency that this was a false promise as he railed against “extreme MAGA Republicans” and painted them a threat to democracy. The trend continued during Thursday night’s State of the Union address, as with each issue he brought up, he made sure to throw a jab at his “predecessor” and Republicans. On a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that said an embryo is a human life for the purposes of families having recourse when embryos are destroyed by fertility clinics, he pointedly asked the GOP side of the aisle which “freedoms” they intend to take away next.

In the end, the lesson of Nikki Haley's run is that Donald Trump defeated every wing of the Republican Party along the way to becoming its champion. In 2016, he beat the avatar of Tea Party constitutional populism in Ted Cruz. In 2024, he bested the reformist culture war version of himself in Ron DeSantis, and then dispatched the post-George W. Bush-era form of suburbanite compassionate conservatism in Haley, who speaks in a combination of defense-industry jargon and Bible verses. He even brought the older era of Chamber of Commerce Federalist Society Reaganite to heel, with Mitch McConnell endorsing him today. Trump's dominance over the GOP is total. The problem Trump has, of course, is that he can't win just with that authoritative GOP support.

Donald Trump is cleaning up in the Republican primaries on Super Tuesday. The 45th president has secured victories in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. Nikki Haley's sole victory is in Vermont. President Biden also bagged easy wins in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. The Democrats also held caucuses in American Samoa and Iowa on Tuesday. Biden won Iowa with 91 percent of the vote, but lost American Samoa to unknown businessman Jason Palmer.

Elvis has left the building. So has Trump, and he left victorious. The “primary show” will have a few encores, mainly on March 5 (Super Tuesday), when multiple states vote, but the outcome is certain. With his decisive win in South Carolina, Donald Trump effectively clinched the Republican nomination. He easily defeated his last opponent, Nikki Haley, in her home state. Trump’s victory there follows those in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Trump has carried every state. No one else has come close. Why did Trump win? For two reasons. First, the voters in these contests are the party’s activist base, and Trump fundamentally reshaped that base during his first run for president and his White House years.

Greenville, South Carolina I’ve now seen three versions of Donald Trump in the state where I grew up. In 2016, he was the impassioned underdog, battling against Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in a state many in the national media assumed would decide against a New York limousine liberal and stop the Trump Train in its tracks. In 2020, he was the prideful, over-the-top champion of the conservative cause — he bellowed through a sweaty speech, calling out to the universal Republican endorsements in the audience, playing the hits to a stadium crowd mere weeks before the word "coronavirus" was known to the average American.