For the amount of attention and news coverage that has been focused on Donald Trump since he left office in 2020, the number of votes he has picked up in the two early nomination contests, the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary, have been surprisingly low. For all of the triumphalist declarations of victory, it has become clear that there is a significant segment of the GOP that is not going to support Trump even if he is the GOP nominee. And while I don't want to give the media coverage in general too much credit, he's been so over-exposed that it is possible a lot of Republicans have come to the realization that giving him another term in the White House would be a political disaster for them.
In New Hampshire last night, 45% of those who showed up to cast a ballot in the GOP primary, including independent voters who went for Haley by massive margins, did not vote for the guy who has been proclaimed as savior, the "only" one who can resolve America's problems, and the god of the whole MAGA world. And in exit polls and analysis of both Iowa, where the state GOP is ultra-conservative and far to the right, and New Hampshire, where it is less so, but still relatively conservative and sometimes effective in electing candidates to office, a third of Republican voters are declaring that they will not support Trump if he is the party nominee.
The Obligatory Positive Spin
Of course, the media that depends on corporate money to operate is going to come up with an obvious spin on the positive side of winning both the caucuses and the primaries. So the headlines read, "Trump wins New Hampshire Primary."
But, putting this in perspective, and using it to build analysis that is reliable in predicting the outcome of a nationwide election, this is really bad news for a candidate like Trump, who once held the office he is running for, and so has a sort of "incumbent" advantage. If he's hit a ceiling within the Republican party, then the numbers will not add up to an electoral college advantage. He lost the independent voters who showed up to vote in the GOP primary by nearly a 3 to 1 margin. And for all of his blabbering about unifying the party, as the other candidates dropped out of the race, and endorsed him, it was Haley who benefitted from their absence, not him. That had to hurt.
The media is fascinated by finding that two thirds of Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire will go ahead and vote for Trump, even if he is convicted of a crime. I know math can be a difficult subject to grasp, but it should be pretty obvious that if a third of that constituency is saying they won't vote for him if he is convicted, and a fourth of them are saying they won't vote for him, no matter what, that doesn't translate into getting the electoral votes of either state, which he must have to win. Biden won comfortably in New Hampshire in 2020, and if a third of the GOP in Iowa had stayed home, he'd have won comfortably there, too.
The Enthusiasm Isn't There This Time Around
A New Hampshire newspaper noted that Trump rallies are being held in much smaller venues than in 2016, and that those who show up tend to start drifting out after about a half hour of demented ramblings. There's one side that says why bother with a primary, since we know he's going to win the nomination anyway, and another that says the perceptible drop in enthusiasm among all but the hard line MAGA crowd is more than his campaign can sustain and still win. The fact that some main stream media has noticed, and mentions this, means, at least from my perspective, that it is probably happening on a bigger scale than they are reporting.
This is visible in something else that has become noticeable. Up until last week, Nikki Haley was running against Trump like everyone else was, complimenting him, claiming he was the right guy at the right time and failing to mention even one of his failures or treasonous crimes to boost their own position. But suddenly, Haley has become more aggressive. Did she also perceive that support for Trump, tested by primaries, is not what she though it was, and sees that direct attacks on her part might actually do more for her than her conciliatory groveling? Did she realize he's not going to pick her for his running mate, so now, her mouth doesn't matter? Did she see that she picked up a significant amount of support when she quit soft-pedaling the rhetoric and became her own person instead of blending in?
That's what it looks like.
MAGA alone is not enough to win a Presidential election. Trump's going to need a lot more than that, including moderate Republicans and a majority of independents, and it's becoming clear that's not going to happen. If Trump loses this November, and I think the President's re-election will be by a bigger electoral and popular vote margin than it was in 2020, Haley might actually be able to step out and give 2028 a try. But that's not going to happen as long as she's carrying Trump baggage by soft-pedaling her criticism of him. Desantis and Scott are done. If Haley wants a shot at the Presidency, she's going to have to be her own person, not a Trumpie, and right now, she's still in his back pocket.
The Presumptive Nominee of the GOP
The turn in rhetoric that came from Haley last night was like watching a tennis match and getting dizzy when the volleys get going fast. She took a prime media spotlight and pointed out that Trump is a loser. She blamed him first of all for losing control of Congress in 2018, for losing the White House, big, in 2020, and even though they have marginal control of the House now, that didn't stop her tirade. Was that the real Nikki Haley, or is the cowering Trump apologist her true character? That's going to make it more difficult for her to turn around, quit and then endorse him.
She hit the nail on the head when she said that what the Biden campaign and the Democrats want to happen is for Trump to become the presumptive nominee. That's pretty obvious. Biden's been broadly hinting at running against Trump for a while now, and setting it up. That's a good strategy. Trump is very beatable when it comes to Biden, in spite of some very dubious polling data that seems to shift whenever the media's narrative needs a boost in ratings.
Here's the difference between the two. The Biden campaign hires top notch, successful campaign management, and listens when they give advice, and bases its decisions on their guidance. Trump hires sycophants, screams at them and fires them when they don't do what he wants, and ignores them. And it doesn't look like that's going to change. The combination of his own campaign experts and those they've picked up from the Obama team, on the advice of his own, will be the key to winning this election. They are all people who know how to win Presidential elections.
So thanks, Nikki, for drawing attention to the obvious.
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