White House Race- January 20, 2024

Today is January 20th. One year from today, a President and Vice President will take the Oath of Office. Will it be the second Presidential swearing in for Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. or Donald John Trump Sr.? Most Americans would very much prefer it being someone else, and someone new to become the 47th President of the United States. However, we are on a course for a different outcome in which either Biden will become the first person in their 80s ever to take the Oath, or Trump becoming the first and only President since Grover Cleveland to return to the Oval Office.

I have been a "political junkie" for decades, but on this weekend before the New Hampshire Primary, I feel better trying to ignore watching political coverage. Imagine how the "average voter" feels. For the most part, this past week has felt depressing, if not overly surprising. For a pre-Trump Republican like myself, there is little that can be done but be resigned to an impending reality. This has been going on for a few years now and only seems more concrete. Among a significant group of Americans, Trump is more than a candidate or a political figure. He is basically a cultural if not religious icon. The hold of the "cult" may be deeper than even I realized a few months ago. At the same time,  Evangelical voters defend their unyielding support for him by saying, "we are electing a President, not a pastor", which is precisely the thing that liberal Democrats used to say in criticism of conservatives.

 

For me, the week started off on a sour note last Sunday when I saw that North Dakota Governor and former Republican Presidential candidate Doug Burgum had traveled back to Iowa to endorse Donald Trump. During his campaign, Burgum struggled to speak out against Trump but made statements in which he said that Trump was not someone he could ever do business with. Yet, he came to Iowa, the day before the Caucuses, to "get on board." This is something that Team Trump has been pushing if not demanding and would become a major theme of the past week. Burgum clearly has his own immediate North Dakota political future in mind or is looking for a possible job in a Trump Administration. So, like so many others in the cowardly wing of the Republican Party, he bent the knee. Maybe Trump will give him a job if he has the ability to, but it is worth mentioning that all sorts of people who actually did work for Donald Trump during his last Administration are not supporting him this time.

 

The Iowa results on Monday were basically what I would have expected, although I was hoping for at least some slight wrinkles in the conventional wisdom.  Trump, despite being a virtual incumbent, surpassed 50 percent by a small margin. Ron DeSantis took second place over Nikki Haley by a slight margin, and no other candidate finished in double digits. The weather was terrible and turnout was affected. This might have prevented the less than enthusiastic but strategic Haley voters from showing up in large enough amounts to have gotten her into second place. She was never expected to do well in Iowa at all, when the field was larger, and her ground game was not as robust as it could have been and she did not spend as much time in the state as she probably would have if her campaign would have seen how important it might have been viewed as. Nobody spent more time or resources in New Hampshire than DeSantis, and he was able to get a small victory by taking the silver. However, it is clear that DeSantis really has no path forward.

 

Trump was seen as the big winner even though barely a majority of a fairly small turnout of one state had voted. This is enough though for many to declare the nomination contest basically over. They may indeed be correct, but it seems a little "undemocratic." The DeSantis team was rightly upset when all the television networks declared Trump the winner based on entrance polls, before the actual voting at the sties had actually begun. 

After the voting was final, Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out and immediately endorsed Trump and called for the other candidates to drop out of the race. Ramaswamy was basically a Trump surrogate throughout, although interestingly, Trump spent last Sunday and Monday attacking Vivek, saying he was "not MAGA." Perhaps he was worried that he needed more votes to hit the 50 percent margin in Iowa or he was just genuinely upset that Ramaswamy was claiming that the "Deep State" would prevent Trump from becoming President again, and thus MAGA needed to vote for Vivek so he could pardon Trump and keep him out of prison. In any event, now that Ramaswamy is campaigning alongside, the former President is "very fond" of him yet again.

Asa Hutchinson also ended his campaign. Many will have remarked that they did not realize he was still running. The DNC put out a statement on Tuesday morning saying as such which was really unnecessary and angered not only anti-Trump Republicans such as myself but many Democrats as well. Does the DNC have that much time on their hands? They put out an even nastier statement about Chris Christie when he dropped out recently. Those two candidates were the only ones in the Republican field to say that they could not support Trump. Frankly, Democrats ought to be trying to get their endorsement and thanking them for being rare voices of sanity in today's GOP,  rather than making snarky statements attacking them. Do they think they have more than enough votes to spare that they do not need anti-Trump Republicans to support them, especially in swing states? 

 

If nothing else, it is just dumb politics. More so, it is Trump level pettiness that they claim to be against. It shows that to the professional Democrat political class that there is no difference between a MAGA Republican and an ant-Trump Republican. Then, they wonder why so many Republicans are afraid to speak out against Trump? Perhaps because Democrats will hit them nonetheless. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, acting as a Biden campaign surrogate is saying that voters should believe there are no differences whatesover between Trump, DeSantis, and Haley. That is simply not true. For all of Haley's faults, she would not try to become a dictator.

In regards to the completely pointless dig at Asa Hutchinson, the DNC doubled down, even after receiving widespread criticism. Their Chairman seemed to justify it by talking about Hutchinson's Pro-Life record in Arkansas. The next day, to his credit, the White House Chief of Staff called Hutchinson to apologize on behalf of the President and to tell him that they respected him. I hope the DNC gets the message. America deserves better than that sort of politics. Hutchinson demonstrated class by saying the apology was unnecessary but welcomed. The campaign of Asa Hutchinson certainly did not win many votes but I hope history recognizes him for having the courage of his convictions that so few others have in politics these days.

As she prepared to pivot to New Hampshire, Nikki Haley said that Iowa had made it clear that the contest was now a "two person race." It is a bit difficult to say that when you just finished in third place, but she said it nonetheless (big Lamar! Alexander 1996 memories for me.) Yes, she will do a lot better in New Hampshire and will not finish in third place there, but the sense is that any momentum she had for the Granite State before the Iowa result is now over. Polls are showing that Trump has a wide lead in New Hampshire with Haley a distant second and DeSantis unlikely to get close to double digits as the last remaining major candidate. DeSantis has indeed already conceded New Hampshire is focusing on the next contest in South Carolina. Trump has spend a lot of the past week in courtrooms related to the E. Jean Carroll case, in which he has already been found liable for sexual assault, and all his courtroom histrionics seem to make his base love him even more.

The media is continuing to be very rough on Haley. Much of that is her own fault as she continues to struggle in speaking about race, in her futile attempts to pander to the MAGA crowd, in the false hope that they will ever come around to thinking she is acceptable. Some have said that many Republican voters rule her out because she is a woman of color, but she does not want to play that card. When asked what should have been an easy question about if the Republican Party was racist (in which she should have said no and I stand with those who oppose racism in all corners), she immediately offered up "America was never a racist country." Now, much of this is a semantics game as to if America's past racial sins, which she certainly acknowledged in her defensive rhetorical ways, truly defined the idea of America itself. If she could speak about these issues more coherently, what she said could be defended, but she goes about it all wrong and gets attacked for it, which steps on her overall message. The emphasis should be on how America has throughout its history taken steps to right wrongs and advance the cause of freedom and equality.

Racism, as well as sexism, is certainly being used against Haley these days though and she certainly knows it. She is the first ever female Republican Presidential candidate to ever be in actual contention to win any state's primary, and some of the typical misogyny and rumor mongering about her has been flying from both the left and the right. What gets more attention though is how Trump is going out of the way to attack her for her name. At birth, Haley as named Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She was born in South Carolina and thus is eligible to be President, even if her Indian immigrant parents were not citizens at the time. Trump is once again spreading birther theories that she is ineligible. Of course, he first did that in relation to Barack Obama, and in 2016, used variations of this attack against both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Both of those weak men endorsed Trump this week as well.

Haley, has been called "Nikki", her given middle name since childhood. Of course, she uses Haley because that is the last name of her husband. Most women still do take the last names of their husbands these days. Trump is now referring to Haley with insulting misspelled versions of her given first name such as calling her "Nimba." It is hard to view that as anything other than racism, and yet his supporters, even the non-racist ones, just choose to overlook it. I did learn this week that "Nikki"is actually a Punjabi word meaning "little one" (which could be another Trump insult), so there is cultural significance to her using that name as one of the one's she was born with. People on the left have long accused Haley of trying to "whitewash" her ethnic heritage, but the first names of her two children also seem to be Indian originated.

The former South Carolina Governor could not have been happy yesterday when Tim Scott, a former 2024 candidate himself, went to New Hampshire and endorsed Trump at a rally. I know I will never look at Tim Scott the same way again. He did not even wait until the New Hampshire results came in to make an endorsement before his home state voted in which he could have at least claimed that the race appeared to be over. Instead, Scott was convinced to stick it to Haley, the very Governor who had appointed him...not merely endorsed or mentored him like a Jeb Bush-Marco Rubio situation, but actually appointed him to the job he currently holds. There is certainly no loyalty in politics. Nikki Haley should be pissed off at Senator Scott, but she has to know she plays the same sort of games.

 

If Trump wins New Hampshire on Tuesday, especially by a wide margin, there will be even larger calls that the Republican nomination contest is already over. I hate to say it, but they may be correct, at least in terms of who is going to win the most delegates (our recent Presidential political history has been filled with so many twists and turns though.) People point out that New Hampshire Independents can boost Haley, which Trump thinks should be illegal, even though that is how he won the primary there in 2016, or that Hillary Clinton surprised everyone by winning there in 2008, when she looked done for, but that was a different time, and a different era. Two years ago, New Hampshire Republicans had fairly strong candidates for the U.S. Senate and in both Congressional districts, yet all lost (which Democrats doing some part to help them) to MAGA opponents in the primaries. So, I unfortunately, do not expect a great outcome for Haley, yet I hope she will continue campaigning as long as possible.

 

As for the Democrats, Biden will win New Hampshire in a write-in, although the whole episode of canceling the primary there after so many decades was probably the wrong move for his party. Will Dean Phillips finish ahead of Marianne Williamson? How many Democrats will write in "Ceasefire" on their primary ballot as a way to protest Biden's support for Israel?

The speculation has already begun to turn to whom Trump might pick as his next running-mate. Certainly, that was a big factor in Tim Scott's endorsement timing and announcement. He is said to be on the "medium list" if not the "short list" but he must have figured he had to do something to give himself any chance of advancing in that bracket. There has been a lot of talk about if Trump and Haley could somehow make amends and become what some think would be a strong general election ticket. The loudest of the MAGA voices, including Don Jr. say they hate that idea, but Trump has played it coy with that possibility. It seems less likely though now based on his New Hampshire attacks against her, and after Haley seemed at pains to rule out the possibility of being on a ticket with Trump, she said yesterday that such a possibility was "off the table."  However, being the calculated politician she is, she probably does not mean that either. A Haley statement endorsing Trump before the month of February is over will not surprise me one bit, though it will upset me of course

Last night, in his attacks on Haley, the 77 year old Trump claimed that January 6 was a beautiful day because he had such big crowds show up for him, and then claimed that Haley, by then in the private sector had been in charge of security at the Capitol on that day. What a completely wacky thing to say. Of course, he really meant Nancy Pelosi when he said Nikki Haley, and that old charge is bogus as well, but Trump sure seems to be messing up a lot of names these days. Obama, Biden, Jeb Bush, George W. Bush, he seems to be increasingly confused. Haley is pointing that out now and probably should milk that all the way through Tuesday. "Many people" are saying that Trump has signs of dementia. Biden supporting Democrats are saying a lot of this as well, although there is probably too much irony there to be appreciated.

So, both parties are headed to re-nominating retread candidates that most Americans do not want. If that happens, there will be a lot of time to speculate as to just what "No Labels" might do next. The tribalists are falling in line though and for Republicans, the calculation has been made that if they are stuck with Trump, they might as well try to be on his good side.

For now at least, I am glad that Mike Pence is holding out.