No.
If the front-runner was someone whose weaknesses and defects weren’t well-known, a strong primary challenger could publicize them, harming the front-runner. But Donald Trump is the most famous person in the world. People already know his negatives. Haley running more commercials isn’t going to add much to that – even if the ads bash Trump. Which they probably will not.
“Well, performance issues, it’s not uncommon. One out of five…”
Stranger
Yeah I’ve got a cream for that. But I did manage to edit it to say what I wanted it to (rather than just the first 8 words) before the edit window closed so see above.
I’m going to take it as a good sign when big Republican donors turn against Trump. I think some of them are less concerned about making sure Trump is the next president and more concerned with the future of the Republican party. What have their donations to Republicans gotten them on the national level? For most of my life, you could always count on the Republicans to rally together but these days they’re divided. Like that woman from the House said about her Republican colleagues, “You guys have distrusted government for so long, you don’t even trust each other.” Even some Evangelical leaders are speaking out against Trump.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think he has a chance in 2024, but I think the cracks present in the Trump facade will only deepen as he continues to attack Republicans who don’t kotow to him.
That Trump is threatening to destroy democratic government as we know it is the lesser evil. (I need to pause and regroup my brain after typing out that sentence. Please take a moment yourselves.)
The greater evil is Trump’s effect on his most rabid base. If he gets into office again, that validates every single thing he’s been screaming in ALL CAPS on Truth Social. He could and certainly would scream those lies and slanders as President. As a winner. As a truth teller. As the Jesus figure his supporters often portray him as.
How could such words not stimulate violence in his base? How would those inside federal government who fought him from 2017-21 not be scared for their and their families lives if they opposed him again? How would state officials not feel free to ram through odious laws that judges would likewise feel too threatened to block? How would the anti-woke groups not feel unburdened by decency in attacking all who they feel are different?
The greater evil is what Trump says, not what he does. What he does can be opposed or reversed in time. What he says as the head of the largest and most powerful cult in American history could reverberate for generations.
Haley backed by Koch* money would be better than that. Low bar, indeed. Her bar may be painted on the floor but Trump’s bar is deep underground.
* Really too bad for the sniggerers that Koch is pronounced coke. Lots of good jokes to be based on coke and power, though.
A little off-topic, but: the name of my elementary school was Koch Elementary, named after a local farmer. It was pronounced locally as “cook”, like a chef. That didn’t stop us silly fifth- and sixth-grade boys from using a slightly naughty pronunciation.
”I’d like to buy the World” - a Koch.
The ideal outcome is not that Haley takes the lead over Trump and becomes the definitive GOP candidate or the reverse. Both of them have their downsides, as detailed above, and granting either one of them an early party mandate would be bad for the US.
The ideal outcome is that this kind of institutional support raises Haley to be competitive with Trump without quite toppling him, resulting in a lengthy race that produces disarray and destructive infighting and makes whichever of them gets the nomination less effective in the general campaign.
Also, I must confess there is a small part of me that would enjoy a campaign in which Biden voluntarily steps down for health or other reasons, leaving Harris in office promoted from VP, facing Haley on the other side. We’d go from a world in which the US basically will never elect a woman president given a male alternative to a campaign in which a woman will become president no matter what.
As long as Harris prevails, obviously. Because Haley is a snake. But nevertheless, the campaign and the country’s reaction to it would be interesting to observe.
Disagree. We’ve had Koch puppets since 2000, if by that you mean Republicans who want tax cuts and cuts to social security (generally in the form of a higher retirement age). DeSantis is dangerous because while he might want less authortarianism than Trump (maybe), he could plausibly get a higher share of it passed overall. Haley is very conservative and won’t stand up to MAGA or anyone else, but I haven’t seen evidence that she would implement Project 2025 by the Heritage Foundation. I think our 230 year old experiment with democracy could survive Haley. Not so sure about Trump or DeSantis.
Polling indicates Trump has the nomination in the bag. But his court cases grind onwards. Could the Trump campaign implode suddenly? Sure. But the big magic date is going to be March 5, 2024. On that day 28% of the delegates will be elected and by March 10th over half of all delegates will have been chosen.
How does that interact with Trump’s legal calendar? Trump’s judge is slow-rolling the Florida documents case. I’m curious about the pace of the NY Civil Trial and the Georgia Racketeering prosecution.
ETA: If there are any conservative patriots among the billionaire donor class, they will fully fund Chris Christie’s campaign. You can’t beat Trump if nobody attacks him. IOW Chris Christie is the only man who can defeat Trump (other than Trump) and Christ Christie can’t defeat Trump. If Christie’s campaign collapses due to lack of funding, we’ll know that GOP donors are all MAGA or Vichy Republicans.
Trump being convicted of a felony, with appeals pending, is an expected event. For Haley to win the nomination, we need the unexpected.
P.S. An answer to this post could be to quote stuff like this:
But I discount such statements because we know that Republicans quickly bounce back to support Trump whenever he hits a new low. Also, even though Republicans politicians may be secretly anti-Truimp, the bulk of GOP voters like him.
That’s how I feel about her. I disagree strongly with her platform and policies for the greater part, but they seem to be bog standard conservative policies, not “light the condition on fire” rabid MAGA insanity.
This just made me flash on an image of Trump as King Lear, and that was … weird.
I might be wrong, but lacking any other more logical explanation, I have long suspected misogyny a significant factor in Hillary’s loss in 16. And it wasn’t only men - or only Dems - who were unwilling to support a clearly qualified woman.
I try to avoid making any assumptions about a group that has shown itself willing to support the likes of Trump, but it is hard to imagine that group strongly supporting a woman of Indian heritage. As unfortunate as it would be to have the likes of Nikki Haley as President, it would be somewhat pleasant if we were able to elect an Indian woman.
Totally have the Toni Basil earworm now.
Ok. The GOP has been in the thrall of the donor class since at least 2000, probably 1980 or earlier. The Koch consortium of right winger donors are the highest profile representatives of this. I’m glad they’ve pivoted away from DeSantis.
Bog standard conservative policies are very bad (see: global warming) but if we lose democracy it feels like game-over to me. It’s not game-over. Lots of middle income countries dip into and out of democracy periodically: I read about them in the Economist Magazine. For decades I believed the US public had anti-bodies that would prevent the emergence of a strongman. I was correct: they do (eg ACLU, eg spontanious emergence of new NGOs like Indivisible, Swing Left and Movement Voters). It’s just that they aren’t as strong as I thought. Not nearly.
That’s the stock market model. It might apply to political professionals. But there are other considerations.
There are lots of non-MAGA Republican voters and supporters who go along with MAGA. For example Koch donors. Conviction could peel a few off.
The second conviction (Trump has already lost a civil sex offender case) could really take the wind out of his sails. It’s not like the guy is that popular to begin with. It’s just that the GOP has a built-in edge in the electoral college. It’s harder defending a twice-convicted criminal to your acquaintances, in casual and short conversation.
Honestly Philly, I don’t know which one of us has the better take. It seems important to figure this one out though. Maybe there’s some test or historical example. Thanks for the link. One thing that separates Trump from most tinhat dicatators is that those closest to him hate his guts. Trump is a terrible boss, a lousy leader of the party, and wholly a product of our bizarre Presidential primary system. That’s a point of fragility.
Many factors played a role, but lest we forget the decisive and culminating issue of the 2016 Presidential election was email retention policies.
It does kinda work though, doesn’t it? Although the argument is made that Lear was, prior to the events of the play, a respectable King, who earned the loyalty and love of his supporters. By the time of the events mentioned, he had become little more than a vain, foolish (and not in the Shakespearean fool sense), and lazy being. Trump has arguably never been competent, having lost multiple fortunes - he’s much more a part of the most corrupt, venal, and unfunny parts of Falstaff if anything.
Haley though, she absolutely could be a Goneril - flatter the old man (Trump), take his power and authority, then leave him out in the cold (no pardon for you!), eliminating her enemies (everyone, including her sister), and consorting with those who throw law and justice to the wind in efforts to grab raw power (Edmund).
Well, I doubt we’d all agree as to what “the decisive and culminating issue” was. Sure, the last minute email shit was likely the final straw. But it was awfully weak beer.
Analysis shows Hillary got 54% of Dem women, and 39% of Repub women. And she only got 41% of Dem men!!!
You are telling me that 59% of Dem men thought some BS about emails was sufficient to outweigh Hillary’s clear qualifications, and instead vote for the pussy-grabber? And all the women couldn’t see the joys that would rain down following a Trump election and subsequent appointments to the SCt?
No, misogyny is not the sole factor. But I strongly believe that it was a factor that swayed enough votes to determine a close election.
Up until the day Obama got elected, I woulda bet the farm that the US would never elect a black man. Let’s hope I am similarly wrong about the electability of a woman of any skin color/ethnicity.
Regarding Hillary, she was winning during most of the campaign:
While I don’t deny misogyny, I think the focus on her is disproportionate. Yale economist Ray Fair analyzes Presidential elections based upon incumbency and the shape of the economy. He’s done this since the 1970s. The model spits out a prediction and you can compare that to the actual. The residual (actual-predicted) gives a measure of the non-modeled effects, eg candidate quality.
2016 indeed produced a large residual, but it favored Hillary. Relative to Trump, Hillary was a strong candidate in the end. The model predicted a Dem vote share of 45.9%. Hillary got 51.2%. I’ll quote page 9 of the pdf:
Looking at Table 3, the largest three errors for the presidential equation are -5.4 in 1992 (W. Clinton > G. H. Bush), -4.7 in 2004 (Kerry < G. W. Bush), and -5.3 in 2016 (H. Clinton versus Trump). The errors for 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012 are all close to zero. The error for 2016 is interesting. The Democrats were predicted to lose with only 45.9 percent of the two-party vote. They in fact got 51.2 percent of the vote, although lost in the electoral college. The Democrats did much better in 2016 than the equation predicted.
There will be a lot of ink spilled in 2025 of how Trump could have done this and Biden could have done that. But the election will be decided by the Federal Reserve, and whether it succeeds in engineering a soft landing. In the past, they’ve had more crashes than perfect three point arrivals.
If she’d been Hillary R. McGillicutty and not married to Bill, she might have done better, but we’ll never know.
Take another look at the chart above, focusing on the gap between Trump and Clinton. Does that show the ebb and flow of misogyny in the US? Of course not. You have to argue that a somewhat better Dem Presidential candidate would have outperformed the fundamentals by basically more than any other candidate since 1920, so the gaps would have been larger all throughout the campaign.
Is that even plausible? My take: yes. Because Trump was an outlier while Hilary was an average candidate. Sure she was terrible on the stump. But she gave solid press conferences and did well in debates. Sure there’s misogyny. But there were plenty of women energized by her campaign. All Dem candidates get picked upon by the press (GOP candidates too). All have flaws. But Trump was a weirdo who had never held public office. Hillary emerged from the political meat grinder as a mixed bag, like all her predecessors. Trump came into the campaign with a deficit.
The support of Trump by Republicans who really should know better still blows my mind.
Yeah, pretty much. Look at the fluctuations in the vote spread above. Lots of opinions shifted to and fro from late August to the end, indicating that there are a core of maybe 10% of voters, not particularly engaged, who are swayed by the tone of television coverage. Or whatever. Who knows? Here’s my cite for the chart: Nobody cares very much what presidential candidates say – Kevin Drum