The Briefing, Vol. XI, Issue 50
Note: The Briefing will be taking next week off in observance of the Christmas Holiday. We will be back on Tuesday, Jan. 2.
This week:
- Nikki Haley is making herself the Trump alternative
- Can she pull a huge upset in New Hampshire?
- Trump returns to the immigration issue that made him president
President 2024
Throughout the muted 2023 campaign season, the knowledge that Donald Trump (R) would probably become the Republican nominee has taken most of the oxygen away from the other candidates. The debates and campaign stops have been less engaging, given the knowledge that Trump is looming in the background.
This is why, until now, there has really been no deviation from the trend of Trump consolidating his lead in the GOP primary and simultaneously pulling away from President Joe Biden (D). This may be changing, however.
In New Hampshire, former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) appears to have significantly closed the gap against Trump in a way no one has anywhere else. And this is coming at just the right moment, since the early nomination contests are just weeks away.
Granted, the newest CBS News poll says that Haley still trails Trump by 15 points ahead of New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 primary/ That is not a small margin. But it is down from a 37-point deficit in the same poll in September, and down from a 27- or 28-point deficit in the last two polls of the Granite State.
At 29 percent, Haley is also reaching a level of support that no one else has achieved against Trump, albeit in just one state. This means that she may eventually reach a tipping point where Trump-averse primary voters currently backing other candidates turn to her instead.
Non-Trump, not anti-Trump: Haley’s task in New Hampshire is probably made easier by the fact that she has so effectively straddled the line between the Trump-sympathetic candidates in this race (like Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy) and the outright anti-Trump candidates (like Chris Christie). Her pre-Trump GOP ideology means that she appears to pull more support from the latter, yet she has not embraced the Christie strategy of indiscriminately savaging Trump. This may be one reason Trump has not spent any appreciable amount of his campaign’s money or time attacking her, preferring to hit DeSantis at almost every opportunity.
Christie said in a CNN interview over the weekend that Republicans cannot stop Trump “by voting for Trump sycophants like Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy.” He is exactly wrong here — the only way anyone could stop Trump, if it is even possible, is by voting for a candidate who does not repudiate his existence or his presidency. This is one of Haley’s selling-points to most normal Republicans, who remember Trump’s accomplishments fondly but perhaps less so his intemperate behavior.
Others have been mentioned (including Tucker Carlson), but Haley is the candidate in the GOP presidential race most often discussed as a possible second-term vice president for Trump. DeSantis is not even in the running, since both men are residents of Florida, and the common wisdom is that the rest of the field just wouldn’t be a good match.
Could Republicans feel good about nominating Haley? If the only consideration is a general election victory, the answer appears to be yes. Were she somehow to outlast Trump and win the 2024 nomination (perhaps in the aftermath of a Trump criminal conviction or some other disaster for his candidacy), she leads Biden by wide margins in some head-to-head polls. The leads are inconsistent, but she is at least competitive, and Biden’s numbers against her are consistently below 45 percent, which is the danger zone for any incumbent. This probably reflects the fact that Haley’s national profile is still low compared to both Trump and DeSantis.
In this regard and in others, Haley is currently outperforming DeSantis in the home stretch. The Florida governor, despite his political success in Florida, has had far less success with his Iowa strategy in this cycle’s presidential contest. Trump’s lead in most surveys exceeds 30 points and there are no signs of a breakout for anyone else, although here too, Haley has gradually improved her standing since September.
Trump: For his part, Trump is going back to his bread and butter issue of uncontrolled Biden-era immigration. And it is a good issue, especially right now. His warnings of the risks of terrorism, echoed by many others, are credible enough in the current environment that the Biden administration might be forced early next year to accept some kind of border enforcement measure in exchange for restoration of funding for the war effort in Ukraine. The political damage to Biden from a migration-connected terrorist attack would be immense, given the situation at the border right now.
Trump’s comments about illegal migrants “poisoning the blood of our country” — and people will interpret them however they want to — are just the sort of thing that drove liberals to rage constantly and conservatives to cringe now during his four-year presidency.
From a purely political perspective, Trump may be miscalculating with this sort of talk. He doesn’t need to be bold right now with a double-digit lead. He just needs to run out the clock.
Trump’s hard-core fan base remains massive and still dominates the GOP. But this is just the sort of statement that could drive quite a few ambivalent early-state voters and caucusgoers to roll the dice and see what happens if they vote for someone else.
Even so, Trump continues to open up his lead against Biden on head-to-head ballot tests. Nationally, he leads Biden in eight of the last ten polls and ties him in a ninth. Biden’s numbers are at their lowest point in the RealClear average since June.
At the state level, Trump is also in surprisingly strong shape for a challenger. A series of state polls released last Thursday by Bloomberg/Morning Consult had him leading Biden in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada. If the race were to finish that way with all other things equal, Trump would win with a decisive 312 electoral votes, more than Biden received in 2020. This is a nervous time for Biden-world.
Senate 2024
Indiana: Democrats’ chances of finding a politically relevant nominee for Senate decreased last weekend when Indianapolis Councilman Keith Potts (D) decided not to run after all. Not that he had a great chance in the increasingly red Hoosier State, but his decision leaves conservative Rep. Jim Banks (R) the strong favorite, especially given the likelihood that former President Trump will lead the statewide ticket. Trump won 57 percent of the vote in Indiana in 2020, an increase from 56.5 percent in 2016.
Montana: When Rep. Matt Rosendale (R) says he is “heavily considering running” for Senate, it is counterintuitively an indication that he might not run after all.
His public statement, absent an actual declaration of candidacy, comes despite a widespread perception that he was already on the point of joining the race.
Rosendale would have to stop Tim Sheehy (R), the preferred candidate of the Washington GOP establishment and apparently also of President Trump. Democrats are already advertising against Sheehy.
But if Rosendale jumps in, he will be giving up a completely safe House seat to engage in what could become a savage intra-party battle and will require all the resources he can muster. Rosendale doesn’t have that much time to dither if he genuinely wants to compete.
Tennessee: Democrats have tried to use a couple of recent controversies to reanimate their post-realignment zombie party in the Volunteer State, but so far it doesn’t look like anything is happening yet. The latest survey from Vanderbilt University has Sen. Marsha Blackburn ® slightly underwater for job approval, yet easily leading.
Blackburn holds a 53 percent to 36 percent lead over state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D), one of the Democratic candidates more likely to face her next fall. Whatever Democrat wins the nomination against Blackburn will have to deal with President Biden’s shockingly low 27 percent approval rating in the state.
Trump won nearly 61 percent of the vote in Tennessee in 2020, an almost identical share to his 2016 win.
