If Trump and DeSantis stumble, as front-runners often do, she has a reasonable chance for the nomination. Then I predict that, as often happens when the candidate is a former governor, she would win in November.
Even if we buy the idea that Republicans are overwhelmingly a bunch of sexist racists (I do not), she still could get the nomination. That is because a lot of sexist racists are determined to prove they are something else. This helps explain why Cain and Carson were on top for a bit despite having great weaknesses as candidates.
I suppose her chances would be higher if not for fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott, who is seemingly in the same lane.
It’s not that we don’t want her to get the nomination. Other than her support of Trump, she appears to be a normal conservative politician. And I would certainly welcome a Republican move in that direction. However, I see no evidence that the Republicans are willing to move in that direction.
The first word is what I think (unfortunately) will trip her up.
[I honestly don’t know that she’s moderate-ish. But currently, that’s her reputation. I guess we’re about to find out.]
Others have touched on why the first two are neutral at best (and IMO, probably a negative in a GOP primary), but could you explain why being from South Carolina is at all important?
Donald Trump is astoundingly popular in SC, and there is very little chance he won’t carry that state.
She will say whatever is needed to increase her chances of the nomination.
I can’t see her calling state GOP leaders in a post-election, post-network-call, post-recount-deadline, attempt to steal a lost election. I can’t see her repeatedly suggest she should be president for life. That’s huge for me.
If moderate means that she would nominate, for a Supreme Court vacancy, someone like David Souter, she is not moderate. If it means not pushing DeSantis-style legislation nationally, maybe. If it means not further pushing to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, maybe again. We wouldn’t really find out if she’s, in any way, moderate unless she becomes President.
The right wingers know that the country is supposed to be run by white men and they vote accordingly. So when they see Democrats voting for candidates that aren’t white men, it confuses them. They don’t see their pattern of exclusively voting for white men as identity politics. They think that identity politics is when somebody votes for somebody who isn’t a white man.
So they think they can trick the liberals by running somebody like Haley. The liberals will have to vote for her because of identity politics.
What will happen is that Democrats will vote for Joe Biden (or some other Democrat). Because we’re not idiots. And the right wingers won’t vote for Haley because she’s not a white man.
Black Republican Tim Scott won his South Carolina 2014 special election Senate race with 90 percent in the primary and 61 percent of the vote in the general election.
Then in 2016 he was unopposed and the primary, and again got 61 percent in November.
Last year he was again unopposed in the primary, winning in November with 63 percent.
Let’s compare to the last three Senate elections for white South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham:
2008 - Graham won his primary with 67 percent and won the general with 58 percent.
2014 - Graham won his primary with 66 percent and won the general with 54 percent.
2020 - Graham won his primary with 68 percent and won the general with, again, 54 percent.
This isn’t a cherry pick, but the closest comparative I could find that would potentially show Republican unwillingness to vote for a right-wing Black. I don’t see the evidence in numbers above.
As I wrote before, I think it quite possible a racist (or sexist) could find themselves voting for a minority (or female) candidate.
One can say that they would vote for a minority Senator but draw a line at the presidency. Because of the Cain and Carson boomlets, you’d then have to say that they could tell a pollster they would vote for a minority president, but draw the line at the actual vote. I can’t prove this wrong, but it seems a stretch that both line-draws could be true. More likely, the Scott supporters either think minority candidates are a good way to own the libs, or don’t much care about African (or Asian) candidate ancestry.
That doesn’t mean Haley will win. Trump and DeSantis are more popular in the party. If Haley was still governor, and was pushing the same state legislation as DeSantis, and Scott wasn’t pulling from her base, she’d be top tier. Now she has to hope the top tier destroy each other or otherwise stumble. It happens.
Going back to the sub-question raised upthread of “Why is Haley running when she (arguably) has no chance?” …
IMO …
Looking at the actual presidential nominees for the R party since, say WWII, how many nominees were selected on their first run at the R nomination for president? And how many got their nod on their second, third, or even 4th run? I’d ask a similar question for the Ds. I’d separate the stats, the question, and the answers for the two parties since their internal dynamics are so different.
Anyhow, although I don’t know the answer, I’m going to bet that first-run R nominees are rather the exception, not the rule.
As such, Haley running in the primary’s now in 2024 isn’t nuts at all, even if she seemingly has little chance of succeeding against the better-known names. It’s all a brand-building exercise for 2028, coupled to a lottery-ticket probability of being happily surprised and successfully grabbing the R’s brass ring this time. Unlike certain other R presidential wannabees and disgraced former Presidents, she’s young enough that 2024 is not her last hurrah. Instead it’s just her first.
Without going too far down this particular rabbit hole, or – quixotically – too far afield from the OP,…
I can’t find free access to this article, but the abstract seems to support my surmise on the Tim Scott question, and may bear heavily – particularly in the Southern red states – on Nikki Haley’s viability:
In a time of unprecedented racial polarization in partisan voting, and in a staunchly Republican Deep South state, one black Republican managed to reach the pinnacle of public office. This article examines Tim Scott’s rise by analyzing precinct-level data to better understand his 2010 election to the US House and data from the Winthrop Poll to explore his more recent US Senate victory. To better understand support for Scott, we also report results from an embedded-survey experiment to assess respondents’ favorability toward Scott when he is characterized by two different frames: (1) “Tea Party favorite,” and (2) “first African American Senator from South Carolina since Reconstruction.” We found that conservatives, evangelicals, and less-educated individuals respond more positively to Scott when he is described as a “Tea Party favorite.” More than an intriguing case study, Scott’s rise tells a broader story of the complicated relationships among race, ideology, and partisanship in the contemporary American South.
[bolding mine]
I don’t know that Haley’s past, present, and current schtick positions her well to capitalize on that sentiment. Is she Tea Party enough for that cohort to set aside their preconceived and deeply-entrenched biases?
[I’m trusting that copying the abstract here doesn’t run afoul of Fair Use?]
I’ve often heard that the GOP likes to nominate whomever is next in line. So your post makes a lot of sense, except perhaps that it reminded me of this headline:
She’s female, well spoken, “not white” and one of the most openly anti-union politicians I’ve ever heard of. That may play well with the “newer style left” that hate unions, particularly police and teacher unions.
With a 7.25 minimum wage still in South Carolina and her regard to worker rights I don’t think nationally she getting the support to win ! But time will tell her true purpose for entering the race, I believe she will attack all candidates except Trump with gloves on but hard enough to be ko’d by Donald and then accept the VP position.
And at the end of that statement he said “she is polling at 1%, not a bad start!!!”
Apparently, he’s going for trolling as his approach to her at this point.
LOL. So he appointed her to the U.N. spot so South Carolina could have a good governor. Yeah, this is kind of a different approach for him. Maybe he doesn’t want to come out swinging with the outright insults. But I don’t doubt he will get there.
I wonder how many of those folks surveyed who approved of the “Tea Party favorite” label didn’t even realize a man named “Tim Scott” was black. In their minds, all black people have names like Washington, LeBron, or Latisha.
Remember these are fundamentally low-information, high-tribal-identification voters.
Right. They’d rather vote for a diversity candidate Republican than any Democrat.
Haley’s candidacy isn’t to appeal to the majority of Americans living in solid red or blue states - if she somehow manages to get the nomination, she may play well in the swing states; perhaps better than Desantis or (og forbid) TFG. All she’d need to do is win what, 4-5 swing states, and the electoral college will do the rest.
And who’s to say the deal she made with TFG isn’t that whomever does get the nomination, if its one of the two of them, the other will be selected for VP? Can you imagine TFG as her running mate?
