New York Times opinion essayist Thomas B. Edsall addresses a question of strategic concern for Democrats in the 2024 campaign, “Can Biden Take a Page Out of Trump’s Playbook?” with respect to the immigration crisis.  As Edsall writes, “In a bid to weaken Donald Trump’s domination of the immigration crisis going into the 2024 election, President Biden has reversed his position and adopted a high-risk strategy….Biden is seeking enactment of border legislation that “would give me, as president, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed.”….On Monday, The Times described Biden’s rationale in “How the Border Crisis Shattered Biden’s Immigration Hopes”:

The number of people crossing into the United States has reached record levels, more than double than in the Trump years. The asylum system is still all but broken.

On Friday, in a dramatic turnaround from those early days, the president implored Congress to grant him the power to shut down the border so he could contain one of the largest surges of uncontrolled immigration in American history.

Trump, acutely aware of the critical importance of immigration to his campaign, is determined to block Biden’s border security proposal, now under negotiation in the Senate. Trump, of course, wants to make sure that the “crisis at the border” remains foremost in the minds of voters through Election Day….The prize in this struggle is the 2024 presidency and all the power that goes with it.”

Edsall notes further, “I asked political strategists and American and European scholars to evaluate the viability of Biden’s immigration initiative and received a wide range of responses….Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has often argued that Democrats have moved too far to the cultural left, questioned the viability of Biden’s immigration strategy in an email:

It’s a steep political hill Biden has to climb on this issue. His approval rating on “handling the immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border” is now 18 percent. Eighteen percent! That’s really, really bad and the lowest presidential approval on the issue ABC News has measured since 2004. In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, Trump is preferred over Biden by 30 points, his greatest lead on any issue.

Illuminating detail, Teixeira continued,

comes from a December survey conducted by the Blueprint group. Between Trump and Biden, who are voters most likely to think is close to their views on immigration? It’s Trump by a country mile: 44 percent of voters say Trump is close to their position, compared to a mere 25 percent who say Biden is close to their position. Even Hispanic voters are more likely to say Trump is closer to their views on immigration than to say Biden is….It’s a bit late in the day to finally be moving on this issue and only under duress from the Republicans. The border debacle has been unfolding throughout Biden’s term and the political damage has been accumulating. A big part of the problem is that there are a lot of Democrats who didn’t — and don’t — really want to do much about border security….I don’t think Biden is really committed to being a different kind of Democrat, just a somewhat more palatable one. And I don’t think he really wants to go after some specific person or group to forcefully dissociate himself from “weak on border security” views in and around the Democratic Party. That limits the salience of his repositioning both in the general political discourse and to voters’ perceptions of him and his party.

“All this said, it’s still worth striking a tougher stance on border security,” Teixeira wrote. “It’s the beginning of a move in the right direction and could help Biden modestly….Would Biden “lose more support on the progressive left than he would gain in the center?” Teixeira asked. His answer: “My view is that, on this issue as on so many others, the progressive left is a paper tiger….The net for the Democrats,” he concluded, “is likely to be strongly positive”

Edsall also quotes Brooking Senior Fellow William A. Galston, who observes: “Biden’s shift on immigration will make a political difference to the situation on the ground well before the election only if his new policies change the day. In the last year of the Trump administration, encounters with illegal migrants at the southern border numbered less than 500 thousand. During the third year of the Biden administration, the total rose to 2.5 million, and the dispersal of these migrants throughout the country has produced fiscal and housing crises in large cities controlled by Democrats….Biden will have to undertake tough measures that won’t be easy to distinguish from Trump’s. The Democrats who understand the political stakes will probably go along with this, while those who see this issue through humanitarian or ideological lenses will balk. If he proceeds down this path, Biden will have to hope that gains among swing voters exceed the losses in his base.” Trump and the Republicans, in Galston’s view, “will pay a price if they are seen as being driven by politics rather than the desire to address a really difficult problem,” but Biden faces a big hurdle in his bid to take command of the immigration issue:

The administration has waited so long to act that it faces a credibility problem that will only get worse if it flinches and settles for half-measures whose effects are incremental at best. Turning this issue around will take determination — and a willingness to endure criticism from fellow Democrats that hasn’t been the administration’s long suit thus far.”

In addition, Edsall writes, “Joel Kotkin, of Chapman University and the Houston-based Urban Reform Institute, argued that adopting a tougher immigration stance is a plus for Biden that comes with little cost: “The progressives, faced with the odious Trump, will fall into line, except on the margins. The open border is not welcomed by most people.”….

It’s hard to see, Kotkin continued,

how either working-class Latinos or African Americans welcome their communities being inundated by people who have entered illegally and about whom we know nothing. Protests in New York and Chicago by working-class people should not be ignored. This year, if I were Biden, I would be more worried about them than far-left foundations or cheap-labor lobbyists who might object.

Edsall notes further that “in communities suffering economic decline and growing isolation, a relatively small influx of immigrants can propel voters to the right.”….Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster, replying by email to my inquiry concerning the current politics of immigration, argued that the Republican Party has increased the odds that the Biden strategy will work. “I believe the Republicans may have given the Biden campaign the opportunity to turn this issue into a real plus,” Goeas wrote, referring to the politicized reasoning Republicans are using to reject the legislation under consideration in the Senate.”….Overall, Kotkin contended, “The political rewards of standing up on the border are far greater than backing the current chaos. Everywhere in Europe support for stricter immigration is moving from the right to the center and even the left, particularly in the ‘enlightened’ North.” Edsall concludes, “The public clearly wants the government to take steps to control the border. If Biden does nothing, Trump will retain his advantage on immigration, which consistently ranks among the top three voter concerns in polls. And most progressive voters understand, deep down, that if they cast a ballot for a third-party candidate or abstain from voting at all, they are in practice supporting Trump.”

One of the more fascinating battles in politics is between the centrist Democratic group Third Way and the allegedly centrist non-partisan group No Labels, which I examined carefully at New York:

The ideological polarization of the two major political parties that took place during and after the civil-rights era fed a partisan polarization as voters began to sort themselves out into dual tribes with contrasting points of view on a broad range of issues. As interparty disharmony increased, it was inevitable that there would be a widespread craving for more cooperation across party lines. That has been the mother’s milk of “centrism” in both major parties (more prevalent among Democrats than Republicans, to be sure) and absolute rocket fuel for bipartisan and nonpartisan organizations like No Labels. That group has flourished since its founding in 2010 as a vehicle for Republican and Democratic centrists to signal their interest in, and in some cases actually work on, joint policy projects, particularly in Congress (where it sponsored the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus).

In the Trump era of hyperpolarization, the craving for bipartisanship on which No Labels feeds has intensified along with voter fatigue with the traditional parties and the gerontocracy that often seems to rule them. Unfortunately, this development has seduced the leadership of No Labels to consider a fateful plunge into its own electoral project at the very highest level: a presidential candidacy in 2024. A significant segment of its original “centrist” supporters and sympathizers — especially those whose “label” being put aside was the Democratic donkey — has objected vociferously. These include the founder and CEO of the once-formidable Democratic Leadership Council, Al From, and, most of all, the organization that is in many respects the DLC’s successor, Third Way, which has become the Paul Revere of Democratic opposition to No Labels. Centrist policy intellectual and former No Labels booster Bill Galston has best explained his and other Democrats’ estrangement from No Labels, as reported by David A. Graham:

“’The initial premise was: We have no choice but to make the two-party system better,’ the political scientist William Galston told me. Galston helped found No Labels, but he parted ways with the group in 2023 because he feared that a presidential bid would help reelect Trump. ‘The current effort rests on a different premise altogether — namely, that we have to go outside the two-party system to make things better,’ Galston said.”

Running its own presidential candidate arguably makes the nonpartisan No Labels a third party, even though the group rejects that … label. In theory, the idea is to jolt Democrats and Republicans into cooperation by beating them to the White House, presumably just once. The premise seems to be that a No Labels president — or, in some iterations of the group’s shadowy 2024 plans, a president who takes office via a deal with No Labels after its candidate has denied either party an Electoral College majority — will retreat from the field after forcing the old parties to play pretty with each other. That scenario requires a degree of trust in No Labels’ leaders that they really haven’t earned, as Graham observes:

“No Labels isn’t offering much information at all about how it will choose its ticket without a primary. The group says it will make the decision about whether to field a candidate after Super Tuesday, based on an analysis of whether such a candidate would have a real shot. Many experts outside No Labels see such a calculation as basically impossible …

“Assuming No Labels does decide to nominate a candidate, how will the group choose that person? That’s a mystery too. Originally, the group planned an in-person convention of supporters this April in Dallas, but in November, it announced plans to hold the convention virtually instead. But No Labels hasn’t said what such a convention would look like or what role delegates would play in choosing the candidate.”

Based on Joe Biden’s own centrist credentials and the tight-knit Republican-base vote that Donald Trump commands, most of No Labels’ Democratic detractors echo Galston’s fear that any candidate sponsored by the group will take more votes away from the incumbent and pave the way for another Trump plurality win even more egregious than his 2016 election. And No Labels’ secrecy about the donors who have paid for its extensive ballot-access operation (which has succeeded in 14 states despite no one knowing the identity of its candidate) has fed the suspicion that a Trump victory could be the whole idea.

Even if you don’t believe the No Labels 2024 initiative is a sinister MAGA plot and instead think it’s a well-meaning but dangerously naïve undertaking (as Third Way’s leaders suggest), it’s just bizarre that its plans have gone so far without a clear plan of what they will actually produce. But there are signs the wheels are falling off this particular bandwagon, as CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reports:

“Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland, quit the No Labels board last month over frustration that power and information were being hoarded by group leadership — and not to, as reported elsewhere, clear the way for a presidential run of his own.

“’It’s been far less organized than he expected it to be’ and ‘he doesn’t see a plan coming together,’ a person familiar with Hogan’s thinking told CNN. ‘You don’t know where this train is going, and you’re signing up for something you didn’t necessarily sign up for.’

“Asked for his own assessment of the No Labels plan, [West Virginia Senator Joe] Manchin told CNN on the road in New Hampshire as he kicked off a national tour, ‘I don’t think anybody knows. I think it’s changing day by day, hour by hour.’

That’s significant since Hogan and Manchin are the two names mentioned most often as potential No Labels presidential candidates. Pretty clearly the organization has veered off course, arguably because it tried to change missions overnight. Historically, those who try to harness discontent with major political parties seek to break the mold by creating their own “third” party in hopes of realigning politics or actually aim at “reforming” one of the old parties in a more productive direction. No Labels’ ostensible strategy of knocking Democratic and Republican heads together and then fading away makes no sense and thus naturally arouses suspicion. It’s probably going nowhere fast in 2024, and that’s a good thing even for those unhappy with the Democrats and the Republicans. No Labels lost its original purpose and as a result has lost its soul.

Reasonable people can disagree about the complex causes of the immigration crisis on America’s southern border. But there isn’t much doubt about which party is trying to block a compromise to address it right now. As Igor Bobic, Arthur Delaney,  Kevin Robillard and Daniel Marans write in “Republicans Who Screamed About A Crisis On The Border Now Oppose A Plan To Fix It” at HuffPo:

Democrats may be able to flip the prevailing media narrative regarding immigration policy to “The GOP is now the open borders party” For those who are following the progress of current immigration policy proposals, the flip merits consideration. As Ted Barrett, Manu Raju & Melanie Zanona explain in their article “GOP senators seethe as Trump blows up delicate immigration compromise” at CNN Politics: “Senior Senate Republicans are furious that Donald Trump may have killed an emerging bipartisan deal over the southern border, depriving them of a key legislative achievement on a pressing national priority and offering a preview of what’s to come with Trump as their likely presidential nominee….In recent weeks, Trump has been lobbying Republicans both in private conversations and in public statements on social media to oppose the border compromise being delicately hashed out in the Senate, according to GOP sources familiar with the conversations – in part because he wants to campaign on the issue this November and doesn’t want President Joe Biden to score a victory in an area where he is politically vulnerable….“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling,” said GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump….GOP Sen. Todd Young of Indiana called any efforts to disrupt the ongoing negotiations “tragic” and said: “I hope no one is trying to take this away for campaign purposes.”….Underscoring just how damaging Trump’s comments and campaign to kill the border deal have been in the Senate, one GOP senator on condition of background told CNN that without Trump, this deal would have had overwhelming support within the conference….“This proposal would have had almost unanimous Republican support if it weren’t for Donald Trump,” the Republican senator said.” If Trump’s Republicans succeed in killing a bipartisan immigration bill, Democrats should make sure they – and Trump – own the kill.

“Is the Good Economic News Good for Biden?,” Robert Kuttner asks at The American Prospect, and writes: “Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department displayed an exceptionally good economy. The economy grew at an annual rate of 3.3 percent in the last quarter of 2023, while core inflation, at just 1.7 percent, was actually below the Fed’s 2 percent target. The economy added nearly half a million jobs in the quarter, wage growth remains positive, and consumer spending is up….The index of consumer confidence soared 29 percent in the past two months, the largest such increase since December 1991. All of this means that the Federal Reserve, which meets next week to decide its next steps, is likely to stick to its plan to cut rates three times this year. It just doesn’t get much better….But can President Biden reap the political credit he deserves, come November? As pollster Stan Greenberg has pointed out, it’s a mistake to keep harping on how great the economy is, since it’s only marginally better for most working families. What Biden needs to do is make the election future-oriented—talk about how much more needs to be done, could be done in a second Biden term….“Soft landing” is one of the most dismal metaphors ever devised by economists. They, and their media mimics, use it to mean that we managed to get rid of inflation without resorting to unemployment. That’s to Biden’s credit….But the economy doesn’t need a soft landing, in the manner of, say, Alaska Airlines, that merely averts disaster. It needs a strong takeoff—even better jobs, wage growth, and more help for working families. Biden needs to emphasize that….This week’s endorsement of Biden by the UAW suggests the kind of help he will get from a resurgent labor movement. The best Biden “surrogates” in the campaign are working-class people and leaders.” In the NH GOP primary, “Fully 77 percent of Haley voters said they’d vote for Biden if Trump were the nominee. In about half the remaining primaries, independents can choose to vote in the GOP primary.” Haley’s cluelessness about American history and the role of trade unions notwithstanding, “The longer Haley stays in,” Kuttner adds, “the more she will remind voters of Trump’s deepening dementia, and the more she and Trump will argue about policy divisions that play to Democratic strengths (cutting Social Security, banning most abortion).”

Nikki Haley may not have much of a chance to unhorse Trump’s ride to the GOP nomination. But no Democrats should entertain the delusion that she is a political moderate just because her behavior appears less deranged than that of her GOP  competition. By any sensible standard, for example, Haley is one of the most virulent anti-labor extremists in the history of presidential candidates. As Noah Lanard writes in “Nikki Haley and Tim Scott Are Here to Remind You Republicans Hate Unions” at Mother Jones, “This weekend, Neil Cavuto of Fox News asked former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley what should have been an easy question about the ongoing UAW strike. Donald Trump had already made it clear how to respond from the right: Say something vaguely supportive about autoworkers, then pivot to claiming the Biden administration will send all their jobs to China by pushing electric vehicles. Instead, Haley portrayed workers in the largest industry in Michigan—a key battleground state that Trump won in 2016—as greedy and ungrateful….“It tells you that when you have the most pro-union president and he touts that he is emboldening the unions, this is what you get,” Haley replied. “The union is asking for a 40 percent raise; the companies have come back with a 20 percent raise. I think any of the taxpayers would love to have a 20 percent raise and think that’s great.” Land adds that “Haley, who as governor in 2014 said she didn’t want unions in South Carolina because “we don’t want to taint the water,” didn’t stop there. “I was a union buster,” she told Cavuto. “I didn’t want to bring in companies that were unionized simply because I didn’t want to have that change the environment in our state.” In “Nikki Haley’s Anti-Union Fanaticism Is Wild Even for a Republican,” John Nichols reports at The Nation, “She despises organized labor with a fury that is unrivaled in American politics….During her time as governor of South Carolina, she waged open war against labor—even going so far as to suggest she would sacrifice jobs for her state in order to keep unions out….“I will continue to be a union-buster, because every time you see me on national TV busting the unions, another CEO calls,” she said while serving as governor. “It just works.” All good Democrats hope that haley will continue to give Trump a hard time. On the outside chance that Trump tanks in the next few weeks and Haley somehow wins the nomination,  however, she would have a hard time convincing working-class voters that she would help them get better wages.

California Governor Gavin Newsom makes the case for President Biden on ABC News:

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Here is a simple truth: how working-class (noncollege) voters move will likely determine the outcome of the 2024 election. They will be the overwhelming majority of eligible voters (around two-thirds) and, even allowing for turnout patterns, only slightly less dominant among actual voters (around three-fifths). Moreover, in all six key swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—the working-class share of the electorate, both as eligible voters and as projected 2024 voters, will be higher than the national average.

It follows that significant deterioration in working-class support could put Biden in a very deep hole nationally and key states. Conversely, a burgeoning advantage among working-class voters would likely put Trump in a dominant position.

This very trend explains a lot about Biden’s current poor position in general election polls, where he is running behind Trump both nationally and in most swing states. In 2020, Biden lost working-class voters by 4 points, while carrying college-educated voters by 18 points. Biden would have lost the working class by more (and perhaps the election) if he hadn’t actually done slightly better than Hillary Clinton among white working-class voters; among nonwhite working-class voters, especially Hispanic voters, he did sharply worse.

In current polls, we see a marked decline in Biden’s support among bothcomponents of the working-class vote with the decline among nonwhite working-class voters if anything larger than the decline among white working-class voters. The result has been a double digit falloff in Biden’s margin among the working class as a whole. The Split Ticket crosstab aggregator has Biden losing working-class voters to Trump by 14 points, a 10-point drop from 2020 and the New York Times/Siena poll has Biden’s deficit among these voters at 17 points, 13 points worse than 2020.

This sets up some unforgiving political arithmetic. The same polls show modest increases in the Democrats’ advantage among college-educated voters, but not nearly as large as the fall off among working-class voters. And it should be stressed that, given the preponderance of working-class voters in the electorate, to truly set off widening deficits among the working class Democrats would need margin gains among the college-educated that are 50 percent larger than their margin losses among working-class voters. Not impossible, but a steep hill to climb.

Inspection of results from swing-state polls indicates the same basic pattern: big Biden losses among working-class voters relative to 2020, with approximate stability or slight gains among college-educated—not nearly enough to counter-balance the working-class losses.

It therefore seems obvious that the key to victory for either side in 2024 lies in their relative performance among working-class voters. For Biden, he needs to bring down his deficit among these voters so it is much closer to the modest levels of 2020, allowing his college voter advantage to be decisive. For Trump, if he is able to keep his working-class advantage at current levels—or even increase it!—he has an excellent chance of surviving even a very large advantage for Biden among college-educated voters.

All of this may be true, but will we actually see an election campaign focused on working-class voters? That remains to be seen. Right now, it looks more like a “Brahmin Left” vs. “Populist Right” election.

“Brahmin Left” is a term coined by economist Thomas Piketty and colleagues to characterize Western left parties increasingly bereft of working-class voters and increasingly dominated by highly educated voters and elites. The Brahmin left has evolved over many decades and certainly includes today’s Democratic Party.

As a Brahmin left party, the temptation is great for Democrats to lean into their emerging strengths and just hope for the best among working-class voters. That is the natural inclination of the elites and activists who now dominate the party.

And indeed there are a couple of potent issues Democrats are planning to run on that are dear to the hearts of their Brahmin left base: abortion rights and defending democracy (“Democracy is on the ballot”, etc.) While for sure these are good issues for the Democrats, especially for your college-educated next door neighbor who would sooner take a bath in hot coals than vote for Trump, it must be recognized that these issues are not as potent and overriding for working-class voters. They are less convinced—far less convinced—that a great analogy for America today is Weimar Germany, 1932. Their concerns are more mundane, connected to their everyday material concerns and relatively conservative values.

Read more…

From “GOP senators seethe as Trump blows up delicate immigration compromise” by Manu Raju, Melanie Zanona, Lauren Fox and Ted Barrett at CNN Politics:

Senior Senate Republicans are furious that Donald Trump may have killed an emerging bipartisan deal over the southern border, depriving them of a key legislative achievement on a pressing national priority and offering a preview of what’s to come with Trump as their likely presidential nominee.

In recent weeks, Trump has been lobbying Republicans both in private conversations and in public statements on social media to oppose the border compromise being delicately hashed out in the Senate, according to GOP sources familiar with the conversations – in part because he wants to campaign on the issue this November and doesn’t want President Joe Biden to score a victory in an area where he is politically vulnerable.

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged in a private meeting on Wednesday that Trump’s animosity toward the yet-to-be-released border deal puts Republicans in a serious bind as they try to move forward on the already complex issue. For weeks, Republicans have been warning that Trump’s opposition could blow up the bipartisan proposal, but the admission from McConnell was particularly striking, given he has been a chief advocate for a border-Ukraine package.

Now, Republicans on Capitol Hill are grappling with the reality that most in the GOP are loathe to do anything that is seen as potentially undermining the former president. And the prospects of a deal being scuttled before it has even been finalized has sparked tensions and confusion in the Senate GOP as they try to figure out if, and how, to proceed – even as McConnell made clear during party lunches Thursday that he remains firmly behind the effort to strike a deal, according to attendees.

“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling,” said GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump.

He added, “But the reality is that, that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president not to try and get the problem solved. as opposed to saying, ‘hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”

The CNN Politics writers note that, “Underscoring just how damaging Trump’s comments and campaign to kill the border deal have been in the Senate, one GOP senator on condition of background told CNN that without Trump, this deal would have had overwhelming support within the conference….“This proposal would have had almost unanimous Republican support if it weren’t for Donald Trump,” the Republican senator said.

One of the few Republican senators who favor the border security deal, “Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who has made no secret of her frustration with Trump over the years, said members need to remember how big this moment is for the border and for Ukraine and put their own politics aside.

“I’m not giving up. This is not about Trump and this is not about me. This is about our country. This is about democracy around the world. This is about security for our own country and so let’s keep pushing to get this border deal,” she said. “Let’s stand by the commitments that we have made for our friends and our allies so that our word actually means something.”

I try not to share too much content here that’s strictly about intra-Republican political matters. But I’ll make an exception today because Nikki Haley’s shape-shifting habits are relevant to political deception in every kind of election, as I explained at New York:

During her aggressively upbeat speech on primary night in New Hampshire, presidential candidate Nikki Haley obliquely acknowledged the fact that the overwhelming majority of Republican-elected officials in her home state of South Carolina — the next and perhaps final stop of the competitive phase of the 2024 GOP nomination battle — are backing Donald Trump.

“Every time I’ve run for office in South Carolina, I’ve beaten the political Establishment. They’re lined up against me again, that’s no surprise,” Haley said. “But South Carolina voters don’t want a coronation, they want an election.”

It was a bit of an odd note for a politician who was twice elected governor of the Palmetto State. Yes, it’s doubtless been difficult for Haley to watch her former home-state allies — including her successor, Governor Henry McMaster, and the man she appointed to the U.S. Senate, Tim Scott — climb aboard the Trump Train. But without question, it’s Trump’s intense popularity in South Carolina, not some sort of “Establishment” disdain for Insurgent Nikki, that has led to her embarrassing lack of elected official support back home. There haven’t been any public polls from the state since early January, but Trump’s smallest margin over Haley during the entire cycle has been 26 percentage points, and he’s at 52 percent there in the RealClearPolitics averages. It’s no surprise: Trump won the state’s primary in 2016, beating out Marco Rubio, the preferred candidate of the South Carolina Republican “Establishment” at the time (he was endorsed by both Scott and Haley).

So perhaps Haley has no real choice but to seek to re-acquire the mantle of the scrappy underdog fighting “the man,” a role she really did assume back in 2010 in her first race for governor. That contest, in which she came from the back of the pack to win a tightly contested Republican primary and runoff (and then a tough general election fight, a bit of an afterthought in that deep-red state) is now overtly becoming the model for Haley 2024 in South Carolina, as The State reports:

“’She’s always been the outsider, she didn’t have endorsements in 2010, she doesn’t have them now, she is running as the outsider anti-establishment candidate, same as 2010 and I think ultimately they have their endorsements and their Washington insiders and that’s totally fine,’ said [Olivia] Perez-Cubas, spokeswoman for the Haley campaign. ‘Nikki is focused on earning the votes and supporters and everyday Americans.’”

There are some big problems, however, with that analogy, other than the obvious fact that Haley was an obscure state legislator in 2010 and has been a dominant figure in Palmetto State Republican politics ever since. In 2010 Haley was the candidate of the hard-core Tea Party conservatives in what might be called the Jim DeMint–Mark Sanford wing of the GOP, systematic ideologues often at odds with the former Dixiecrats who were slowly dying out. Sanford’s bizarre 2009 extra-marital affair conducted under the guise of “hiking the Appalachian Trail” made him damaged goods in 2010, but his estranged wife, Jenny, was an important force behind Haley’s ascent. Her real stroke of luck, however, was becoming the very favorite candidate of the then-red-hot right-wing folk heroine Sarah Palin, the veritable Queen of the Tea Party, who designated Haley a fellow Mama Grizzly, as the Washington Post recently recalled:

“Former congressman J. Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.) still remembers what he calls the ‘seismic’ quake that upended the 2010 South Carolina Republican primary for governor. …

“[F]ormer vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin came to town, holding a raucous rally for Haley on the steps of the South Carolina State House in downtown Columbia.

“’We felt a tectonic shift, honestly, to the point where we actually went back into the field the next week, because it was that earth-shattering,’ Barrett said.”

Palin’s high-profile backing perfectly set up Haley to campaign as the “conservative reformer” battling the state party’s “good ol’ boys” (code for former Democrats who had drifted into the GOP in opposition to civil rights measures). She beat Barrett in a runoff in which she won crucial backing from third-place finisher Henry McMaster (the same Henry McMaster who’s being deemed an “Establishment” figure for backing Trump), and the rest was history.

So how does this translate to 2024? Not very well. Trump is now the candidate of the right-wing insurgents, and he’s in the process of executing a hostile takeover of the Republican Establishment, with last-ditch resistance from beltway types and donors who are almost invariably backing Haley. In New Hampshire, Haley’s very best state going into the January 23 primary, Trump won (according to the exit polls) 71 percent of self-identified conservatives, and 89 percent of those who describe themselves as “very conservative.” These are the kind of Republicans Nikki Haley and Sarah Palin were appealing to in 2010. They are now populating the MAGA movement, which in many respects is the Tea Party on steroids and with a very bad attitude.

You can’t blame Haley for trying to make a virtue of necessity by treating her lack of elite and popular support in South Carolina as the product of an arrogant Establishment she is bravely battling, just as she did 14 years ago. To a limited extent, it might even work. A wild card in her 2010 victory was an ugly spate of racist and sexist comments and rumors about her (most notably undocumented claims of extramarital sexual activity) that reinforced her image as a courageous woman of principle fighting piggy rednecks. Trump’s strange decision to savage her personally for refusing to fold her tent, along with his penchant for racist nicknames for her, will bring back some unsavory Palmetto State memories of those early smears.

But in that respect as in others, Haley cannot expect Trump to win this or any other primary for her with his excesses. If nothing else, Trump’s crude antics will remind primary voters that no matter how many endorsements he gathers from elected officials, he’s the unrivaled King of Chaos, and his “establishment” is based on the very ideological extremism that gave Nikki Haley’s political career its first big lift.

 

Feeling a bit bummed by Trump’s wins in Iowa and New Hampshire? Laurence H. Tribe, University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University and Dennis Aftergut, former federal prosecutor, have an antidote in their article, “Why President Joe Biden should be feeling good about a rematch with Donald Trump” at MSNBC.com. As Tribe and Aftergut write, “The good news, as the election comes into sharper focus, is that there is strong reason to believe that the sensible American majority will preserve our democracy and our freedoms in the only way we can, by rejecting Trumpism and keeping President Joe Biden in office. The surest basis for optimism is evidence that the reality of a robust economy is sinking in with voters. Last week, The Wall Street Journal, citing a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey, reported, “Consumer confidence last month saw its biggest one-month gain since March 2021.”….As Biden’s campaign shifts into high gear, you won’t need fantasy to find hope that he can win, so long as reality-based Americans — those clear-eyed about the economy and clear-eyed about Trump and the Republican Party — go to the polls like they did in 2018, 2020 and 2022….Though some worry about a lack of enthusiasm for Biden among Democrats, especially among young people, keep in mind the wise observation of The New Republic’s senior editor Brian Beutler: “[A]nti-Trumpism is the most powerful force in American politics.”….Biden opened the year powerfully framing the 2024 election as one whose stakes “are the preservation of democracy and freedom,” including reproductive freedom and freedom of the press….And Trump has done nothing but reinforce that framing with his constant anti-constitutional threats. On Jan. 17, for example, he said CNN and MSNBC should have their licenses taken away. With the right messaging, the Biden campaign can help the public see Trump’s rhetoric as a threat to every one of us.”

Tribe and Aftergut continue, “Biden is also sharpening his focus on abortion rights and the ways Republicans have eroded them. He has a gripping new ad running sure to appeal to those who cherish reproductive freedom….  The elections Democrats won from 2018 to 2023 tell us something important: Campaigning on the threats to reproductive freedom drives Americans who don’t want the government messing with their bodies or stalking their bedrooms to wake up and vote….But again, reproductive freedom is far from all. Biden’s 2022 legislative accomplishments, including getting Congress to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Act, the Chips and Science Actand the Inflation Reduction Act, are big economic wins that ordinary Americans are now feeling….Bloomberg reported last week that “U.S. consumer sentiment has risen to its highest level since July 2021… according to the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers Preliminary Results for January 2024.”….As the Journal said in its report about consumer confidence, “[A]s inflation cools … [a]nd with the solid labor market putting money in the bank accounts of freely spending consumers, recession fears for 2024 are fading.”….“It’s the economy, stupid,” as James Carville famously framed Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 election message. It always has been, and Biden appears to have landed in an economic sweet spot for his re-election….Democrats who need an extra dose of hope should pay attention to how the GOP is stumbling. Local parties play a huge part in the ground game of presidential campaigns — getting out the vote — but, as CNN reported on Jan. 20, there are growing Republican concerns that the turmoil in state GOP organizations could improve Biden’s election prospects….One last point: As Haley herself pointed out, Trump isn’t as sharp as he was. His bizarre rambling, his mixing up the names of Republican politicians and Democrats and his remarks that suggest he previously ran against Barack Obama have grabbed headlines over the last week or so….When the U.S. electorate hears and sees him next to Biden, it will be clear that the incumbent is the candidate with presidential command.”

Thomas B. Edsall shares a similar conclusion in his New York Times opinion essay, “We Are Normalizing Trump Again.” As Edsall writes, “this election year may surprise us, it will test, under heavy fire, the strength of the Trump coalition.” Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, shares this view. In response to my inquiry, Enos emailed me to say:

It’s certainly not the case that a majority of voters have normalized Trump. He remains a candidate favored only by a slight majority of voters within a minority party. But, given the U.S. electoral system, that makes him a legitimate candidate.

Even though many voters are willing to vote for Trump, Enos argued:

It doesn’t imply that they have accepted his vision of America — only that they prefer him to the other candidate and are willing to look past things about him that others find disqualifying. To many, Trump’s rhetoric and past actions make him unfit to hold office — and to be clear, he is a genuine threat to American democracy — but, unfortunately, not enough people see it that way, so he remains electorally viable.

Edsall notes, further, ….”Jonathan Weiler, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, put it this way by email:

The kind of scrutiny a presidential campaign brings is just beginning. So, in spite of the fact that Trump receives more attention than is typical of non-presidents, he still has not yet been under the microscope as a “presidential candidate” to nearly the extent that he will in the coming months. And that will expose his liabilities — including what appear to be his growing cognitive challenges — to a much larger swath of the public.

For nearly a decade, Trump has avoided, time and again, the kind of public condemnation that destroys political careers. At the age of 77, he has lost a step. The next nine months will test what remains of his stamina, agility and cunning.”

In “Nikki Haley, Dean Phillips Learn the Hard Way as Ageism Flops In New Hampshire,” Bill Scher writes at The Washington Monthly: ““I don’t think we need to have two 80-year-olds sitting in the White House when we got to make sure that we can handle the war situation that we’re in,” said Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on CNN Sunday, referring to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, “We need to know that they’re at the top of their game.”….Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips made the same argument this weekend as he closed out his New Hampshire campaign against Biden: “If you listen to the voters, people feel he’s at a stage of life that makes it incompatible to leading the free world,” said the Democratic representative from Minnesota. “And the same is true of Donald Trump.”…Both ran campaigns premised on explicit ageism. Both lost….Why? Despite pockets of discontent, most Republicans agree with Donald Trump’s views, and most Democrats agree with Joe Biden’s views. And in past presidential elections, old age alone was not reason enough for voters to dump a leader with whom they generally agree….In an argument equal to Haley’s in its incoherence, Phillips began his campaign by saying, “I think President Biden has done a spectacular job for our country. But it’s not about the past. This is an election about the future,” But Biden’s “spectacular job” is happening in the present, not the past. The policies he’s enacted—including investments in clean energy, infrastructure, and semiconductor manufacturing—are all about building for the future. What about Biden’s performance today argues it would not be of similar quality tomorrow? Phillips did not, and cannot, explain….to most Democrats, Biden has moved the country forward. He muscled through pandemic aid. He tackled supply chain disruptions that contributed to inflation, which is now cooling. He protected the Affordable Care Act, which has provided coverage to eight million more people. He capped monthly insulin costs at $35 for Medicare beneficiaries. He’s invested in clean energy and making it more affordable. He’s funding infrastructure, building semiconductors in America, and presiding over a record stretch of low unemployment….We have two presumptive nominees with different visions for the country, each with a successful record from the vantage point of their bases. Ageism cannot, and did not, erase those achievements. And now, because ageism failed in the primary, ageism is less likely to cast a shadow on the general election.”

After watching the returns from New Hampshire on the evening of January 23, I offered a take on the rogue Democratic primary at New York:

Despite lots of irresponsible talk about Joe Biden potentially getting ambushed in an officially unauthorized New Hampshire primary where he wasn’t on the ballot, the president brushed aside two opponents and won a primary for the first time in this influential state. He won even though he didn’t campaign there and even though Democrats had to go to the trouble to write in his name. And he won about two-thirds of the vote against two challengers who essentially camped out in New Hampshire, hoping lightning would strike. Some predicted he would underperform and get knocked out of his reelection race like Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Instead Biden called into question whether Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson have any reason to continue their unsuccessful candidacies.

In fact, Biden won a double victory in New Hampshire. Aside from winning his own primary, his general-election strategy is being vindicated by the continuing success of his preferred general-election opponent, Donald Trump. No, Trump didn’t (or so it seems) knock Nikki Haley out of the Republican race. But the former president’s nomination seems really inevitable now. And the fact that he may have to grumpily stalk the primary campaign trail for at least a month before it’s official will give the White House fresh opportunities to remind voters (including Haley supporters) of the fateful choice they will have to make in November.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden can move on to his first official, non-rogue primary in South Carolina, where Democrats will vote three weeks before the Trump-Haley battle there. The Palmetto State Democratic primary should be a real love-in as Joe Biden campaigns among the voters who absolutely saved his bacon in 2020 and put him on the path to the presidency. The contrast with the glowering Trump and the Republicans who are on a white-knuckle ride with him should be richly rewarding for the 46th president.

Some instructive excerpts from “These New Hampshire voters don’t love everything Trump says. But here’s why they’re planning to back him” by John King at CNN Politics:

“Portsmouth, New Hampshire CNN — Andrew Konchek has a long list of complaints about Donald Trump. But there’s one reason he is ready, again, to set all those worrisome things aside…..“I’m with Trump because he supports fishermen, you know, and obviously it’s my livelihood,” Konchek said in an interview at the Portsmouth pier….Konchek says politicians and regulators repeatedly ignore suggestions from those who work on the water about how to protect the climate and the fish stock in a way that also allows working class fishermen like him to make enough to get by….Trump opposes planned green energy wind farms off the coast that Konchek believes would destroy the historic fishery just off the jagged coastline where New Hampshire and Maine meet….While in Portsmouth last week, Trump also said he would on his first day back in office get rid of the government observers who are on board every trip to make sure fishermen honor quotas and other rules….“Trump does not support the Green New Deal or the wind farms and I know that he backs us fisherman,” Konchek said….Konchek sees a vote for Trump as a vote to save his job….“I don’t like the way that he speaks sometimes. He can be a little ignorant and rude.”….“He’s kind of a bully,” Konchek said….“But you think he fights for you?” we ask….“I do. Yep.”….So Trump gets his vote Tuesday.”

Ditto for Debbie Katsanos….”She is an accountant, voted for Bill Clinton twice, backed Trump beginning in 2016 and, like many voters we meet, is past her boiling point with Washington and politicians…..“At first I didn’t like him and thought he was a big blowhard,” she said. “But then I started listening. … He talked like, he talked like me. I felt I could carry on a conversation with him.”….Not that she agrees with everything Trump might say in that conversation….“I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid,” Katsanos said. “He could tell me the moon is made out of cheese. I’m not going to believe that, you know.”….So who won the 2020 election?….“Oh, Biden,” Katsanos said….Her bottom line on Trump: “Sometimes he just doesn’t know when to shut up.”….But he will get her vote Tuesday because of her bottom line on what she wants most from Washington….“Close the border and get this economy moving again” is her list. “He’s got faults,” she says of the former president. “He’s not a saint. He doesn’t walk on water. I think he relates to people. He’s relatable.”

“Deven McIver will cast his primary ballot in Thornton – population 2,809….“I’m going to for Trump,” he told us during a break from his work at a quarry preparing giant slabs of stone to be crushed into construction gravel….It is mostly Trump country up here, though McIver, 46, says he voted for Barack Obama in 2008….“I said, ‘Oh, we’re going to have all this change and stuff,’” McIver said….But he skipped the 2012 election because he was disappointed by Obama and didn’t like Republican Mitt Romney. Then in 2016, he was excited enough by Trump to vote in the primary….“Because he wasn’t a politician,” McIver said. “So I thought this will be interesting.”….“Pretty good,” is McIver’s grade for Trump’s term as president. He was especially troubled, though, by “a lot of people coming and going” in top White House and agency jobs….“I don’t pay attention to it,” is his answer when asked about the caustic Trump social media posts and attacks he dishes out at his rallies. “I’m more busy getting up, getting ready to go in the morning.”….McIver doesn’t see himself as qualified to assess whether all the legal cases against Trump are legitimate….But while Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in all those cases, rails against prosecutors and judges and anyone he sees as a threat, and his MAGA supporters blame anyone but Trump, McIver takes a calm wait-and-see approach….“He has to go through a process for that,” he said. “And how it turns out is how it turns out.”….“If he’s convicted on it, then he goes to jail,” McIver said. “I guess he won’t be president.”….“Sometimes he’s not his own best friend,” he said. “He’s different. … It’s a show.”….McIver makes $40,000 a year, enjoys the work and is grateful his commute is just a few miles so he has more time with his family….It is a paycheck-to-paycheck life and inflation is especially tough on those with little to no margin in the family budget….“With Trump, I was doing pretty good. I was able to save more,” McIver said. “Right now, it is harder. … Your groceries are expensive and the cost of everything you purchase is expensive.”….“I know what I’m going to get,” McIver said. “I know he will fix the border and work on the economy.”….But he makes clear he is “just a regular Republican.”….“I don’t stand on the side of the the road with a flag every Saturday.”