What If Biden’s Just A Better Candidate Than The Confirmed Rapist, Criminal Defendant?
It might actually matter!
Donald Trump is a weak presidential candidate. This should seem obvious, considering that he’s facing 91 felony charges from five indictments in four separate jurisdictions. However, the prevailing media narrative is that this is his election to lose. Wednesday, The Washington Post ran this column by Monica Hesse, “The debate about Sonia Sotomayor is not about sexism. It’s more dire.” The ongoing series of op-eds calling for Sotomayor’s resignation from the Supreme Court is rooted in the fear that President Joe Biden will lose the November election to Trump.
I can appreciate planning for the worst possible scenario. I’ve done that since kindergarten. However, there is reasonable cause for cautious optimism.
The Pennsylvania primary elections were Tuesday, and Trump won the Republican presidential primary with 83 percent of the vote. However, behind this seemingly overwhelmingly victory was the 17 percent of the vote that Nikki Haley carried. Haley dropped out of the primary race on March 6, almost two months ago. She hasn’t made many public appearances since ending her presidential bid (she just took a job at a right-wing “think tank”), but nonetheless 155,000 people across the state made a point of voting for her and specifically against Trump. That’s well more than Biden’s margin of victory in the state. Pennsylvania has a closed primary system, so these weren’t Democrats or Trump-hating independents crossing over to humiliate him. It’s almost six months until Election Day, and rank-and-file Republicans in a key swing state are still saying, “Anyone but the potential convicted felon.”
Trump, a bad person and a terrible candidate
Trump viciously attacked Haley throughout the primary and was characteristically ungracious when she ended her campaign. When she lost every Super Tuesday state but Vermont, Trump posted on his jack-legged social media site, “Nikki Haley got trounced last night, in record setting fashion, despite the fact that Democrats, for reasons unknown, are allowed to vote in Vermont, and various other Republican Primaries. Much of her money came from Radical Left Democrats, as did many of her voters, almost 50%, according to the polls … At this point, I hope she stays in the “race” and fights it out until the end!”
The 155,000 Republican voters who showed Trump the back of their hands were not in fact “Radical Left Democrats” — not even the 50 percent figure that Trump pulled out of somewhere gross. Trump might struggle to accept this fact but he lost Pennsylvania the last time. Those Haley voters could be Biden or Trump voters from 2020, but he’ll need them both. He’s staging a comeback so he needs to gain ground. Trump’s whole strategy makes you think he actually believes his election lies.
The pattern since Haley withdrew is persistent and not positive for Trump. Let’s look at some swing state results. Haley carried 13 percent of the vote in Georgia, and her 77,902 voters far exceed the 11,780 votes Trump wanted Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” for him. Georgia is an open primary state, yes, but Trump maxed out Republicans in 2020. He’ll need to win independents, which is how Biden, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock all won their elections.
Arizona is also an open primary, and 110,966 voters cast ballots for Haley. An election a reality-based poll, so I’m skeptical of any other polls that show Trump actually winning the independents (and even Republicans) necessary to beat Biden.
Haley won 76,752 votes in Wisconsin, more than triple Biden’s winning margin in 2020. Haley won 155,560 in Florida and 162,563 votes in Ohio, both states that are supposedly a lock for Trump.
The Gray Lady is very sensitive to Trump’s feelings
The New York Times put a more positive spin on these results in its article, “What to Make of the ‘Zombie Vote’ Against Donald Trump.” The tone was almost reassuring: “Votes for dropout candidates are a regular feature of contested primaries.” The Times suggests that the anti-Trump vote is about the same as the “unusually high number of votes for ‘uncommitted’ and candidates other than President Biden in this year’s Democratic primary.” However, Biden won 941,516 votes in Pennsylvania to Trump’s 790,477. The anti-Biden vote was split with 68,999 votes for Dean Phillips (less engaging than your typical zombie) and 60,178 votes write-ins. Biden also commanded a larger share of his party’s primary vote in Arizona (89.3 percent) than Trump (78.8 percent).
This MAGA pep talk piece also included a handy visual listing past nominees since 2000. You’ll notice that Trump 2024 has the lowest share of votes against him. He’s unstoppable!
But wait … this list doesn’t include George W. Bush in 2004 or Barack Obama in 2012. Both incumbents dominated their primaries, just like Old Man Biden. Donald Trump is not running an insurgent candidacy. The Republican Party treats him as the incumbent president, even still granting him that title he no longer has and never deserved. John Kerry, John McCain, and Mitt Romney weren’t dictating policy to congressional leaders. The Republican National Committee was fully in the bag for Trump, even before his daughter-in-law took over.
Trump’s performance is actually less impressive than in 2016 when he didn’t control the Republican establishment, and his primary opponents probably would have mentioned if he’d been indicted for multiple felonies.
Biden is actively courting the anti-Trump vote
Trump has refused to reconcile with Haley, who still hasn’t endorsed him. It’s not a surprise, because Trump is a garbage human who’s incapable of humility. His ongoing attacks against a very dead John McCain probably cost him Arizona. We shouldn’t dismiss the potential impact of the “uncommitted” Democratic vote, but Biden isn’t a malignant narcissist. He will keep trying to bring those voters around to his side.
Biden’s also done a better job of connecting with Haley supporters, saying “there is a place for them in my campaign.” He released this damning ad that reminds Haley voters how gross Trump is.
Philippe Reines, a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, told the Times that he’s skeptical that Haley won’t come around and end up backing Trump when it matters most. She’d join a shameful but crowded group that includes Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Mitch McConnell, and Bill Barr. That could very well happen, but Haley might end up at the same table as Chris Christie, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Mike Pence. A relatively small number of Republicans and right-leaning independents rejecting Trump could block him from the White House again.
Amy Walter at Cook Political Report pointed out that Haley “took some of her strongest support in the more swingy [Pennsylvania] counties of Cumberland (outside of Harrisburg): Erie, Berks and Lancaster.” Trump is a disaster in the suburbs and he’s a likely drag on down ballot Republicans in those areas, as well. Even if Haley were to fold and back Trump over Biden, it’s not a given that the “Haley coalition” would follow her down the MAGA drain.
We have every reason to fear Trump winning the 2024 election, but as Jean Luc-Picard said, “fear is an incompetent teacher.” The primary and special election results are proving more instructive.
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The lazy media still has two toxic ingredients baked into their DNA: horse race politics at all costs, which coincides with ‘both sides’ false equivalency. Look at the NYT graph: the numbers are shaded in a way that gives Trump a significance that isn’t there, and supports their misleading narrative.
Whether Haley endorses Trump or not won't make a difference, because I noticed her percentage of the primary vote remains virtually the same before and after she dropped out, which suggests her voters aren't so much voting for Haley as they're voting against Trump. I doubt they'd care what she says. It'd be one thing if she made a convincing argument for why Trump skeptics should come home to him, but she won't--at most, it'll be "Biden scary" which clearly hasn't worked on those voters yet.
The thing that give me fear here is the polling--it consistently shows a virtual tie, and the last two times Trump was on the ballot he overperformed his polls. He seems to draw in a lot of "occasional" voters who won't show up when he's not on the ballot, and are hard to poll, and unless the polling for 2024 has made some major correction that overly-favors Trump (which would mean Biden is really far ahead of where he is), that is ominous for fall without some major shakeup. The counterpoint to this is that while the polls show the race as tied, it also shows that it is tied in the mid-40s, meaning about 10% of voters are up for grabs, and it is possible they'll come home to Biden as the campaign heats up.