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Nikki Haley’s and the entire Republican field’s missed opportunities
By Colby Etherton
With the 2024 presidential election season officially underway, the field has narrowed to two candidates on the Republican side: former President Donald Trump and former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Haley needed a strong showing in New Hampshire’s January 23 primary, coming in second to Trump and losing by 11 points. Â
While the Republican primary has long been an inevitable slog toward a Trump nomination, Haley and virtually every other nominee talking about Trump and his record with kid gloves did themselves no favors. In every debate, Haley and the others shied away from critiquing Trump and ensured that the race stayed a battle for second place, barring Trump’s numerous legal issues removing him from contention.Â
The reality is that the vast majority of the Republican Party approves of Trump, so getting voters to change their minds was always going to be a difficult feat. But by not even attempting to carve out her own lane, Haley further enabled the inevitable. Sure, she casts herself as a more moderate alternative with a better chance at winning a presidential election, but beyond that she’s failed to make a compelling case to Republican voters to change their minds. Nevertheless, Haley is staying in the race as the primary moves to South Carolina, a state she governed for six years and a state she’s polling further behind Trump in than she was in New Hampshire. Barring any kind of shift in Trump’s legal fortunes (notably, on Jan. 26, 2024 a jury ruled that Trump needed to pay former columnist E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million dollars for defamation), it will be incredibly difficult for her to get any kind of momentum going.Â
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden won the New Hampshire primary on the Democratic side in a write-in campaign. Biden did not appear on the New Hampshire ballot as he sought for South Carolina to be the first state in the Democratic primary. South Carolina notably revived his presidential campaign in 2020 after giving him a decisive victory over the other Democratic candidates; prior to South Carolina Biden had failed to perform well in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states that for years have been first in both parties’ primaries.Â
Biden’s primary challenger, Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips, has regularly stated that he admires the President and agrees with him on a majority of policy issues, but feels that Biden is too old and is concerned about Biden’s current polling numbers in battleground states against Trump. Biden’s favorability ratings are historically low, though Phillips’ case is currently failing to gain traction as the Democratic apparatus and Democratic voters as a whole have backed Biden — even in a state primary where he wasn’t officially on the ballot. Â
We are in a paradoxical scenario where Biden and Trump are both quite unpopular, with polling indicating a majority of Americans preferring other candidates to run, yet they remain the overwhelming favorites to secure their respective parties’ nominations.
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