Super Tuesday Fallout

Donald Trump and Joe Biden have each trounced the competition on Super Tuesday.  Trump won every contest except Vermont, while Biden won all but American Somoa.  With Vermont, Nikki Haley was bolstered by Democrats who voted in the open primary.  Jason Palmer defeated Biden in American Somoa by a vote of 51 to 40.  Yeah, not a big turnout and basically meaningless except as a funny footnote.

As of today, Nikki has suspended her campaign and Trump is effectively the nominee.  Both Trump and Biden should have their nominations officially sewn up by the end of the month.  The rematch is coming but now both candidates have presidential records to compare.  With illegal immigration as an issue, Trump wins that topic by a wide margin.  The economy is trickier since there are positives and negatives to examine from each of their presidencies.  With Trump as the nominee, Biden's age becomes less of an issue, though his mental health stays on the table.

Will 2024 be a repeat of Grover Cleveland or William McKinley.  Grover Cleveland ran twice against Benjamin Harrison, losing the first time but winning in the rematch.  William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in 1896 and beat him again in the 1900 rematch.

Primaries Over

Though it is unclear as of this writing if Nikki Haley will end her campaign for president, it is clear that she has no traction.  Her home state of South Carolina, where she served as governor for 6 years, has chosen Donald Trump by a 60-40 margin in today's primary.  If you cannot carry your home state, what chance is there anywhere else?  Trump is 5-0 in the contests so far.

On the Democratic side, Joe Biden is 3-0 vs. the only remaining opponent, Dean Phillips.  As only two states have awarded delegates for the Democrats so far, I won't call this one over yet but Phillips better have a good showing in the next 2 outings or he's also done.

RFK Jr. withdrew from the Democratic nomination even before voting began and is now running an independent campaign.  Independent candidacies rarely achieve anything.  Without a party to do ground work, he'll needed to create his own party apparatus to get the vote out.  Unlikely to achieve even the impact of the Green Party or the Libertarian Party.

It does look like we are headed for a rematch from 2020.  Both candidates now have presidential records that can be compared.  Which one looks better?  Does it matter?  Of course, a lot can happen in the next 8 1/2 months.

Democrat Voters Support Haley

Donald Trump has won big in New Hampshire.  His margin of victory over his last remaining competitor, Nikki Haley, is 10% as of this writing.  However, that does mean that Haley has more then 40% of the vote, which is substantial.  She views this as an invitation to continue her campaign to South Carolina, the state where she was governor for two terms.  There is a problem with Haley's support in New Hampshire though.  As an open primary, she received 73% of her support from independent voters and only 27% from registered Republicans.  Of her 130,000 votes, only around 30,000 are Republicans.  CNN even aired an interview with a Democrat who voted for Haley in the primary with the goal of weakening Trump.  The majority of her support was from people who don't identify as Republican!  This is why primaries should be closed.  Why let the other party pick your nominee or sabotage your nomination process?

Of course, both parties do it.  The most famous example of this by Republicans was when Rush Limbaugh called upon his listeners to vote for Hillary in the 2008 Democratic primaries.  As McCain had sown up the Republican nomination before Obama had secured the Democratic one, the opportunity was there.  Rush called it Operation Chaos.

But it goes back much further.  When I was a senior in high school (1985), my civics teacher explained to the class how he regularly changed his party registration in order to pick weaker candidates from the other party.  Even if we had a closed primary, this method would overcome it.  Still, I like this one the best.  How many voters are going to regularly change registration compared to just voting in an open primary?  Yeah, closed primaries would mostly resolve the issue.

Members of the party should be selecting their nominee, not members of the opposition party.

Iowa Caucus 2024

Donald Trump has won 98 of 99 counties in Iowa, garnering a majority (51%) of the votes.  The one county that he did lose, Johnson County, he lost to Nikki Haley by 1 vote.  It should be noted that many Democrats participated in the caucus by changing their voter registration on the day of the caucus.  Such voters invariably chose Haley.  Though Haley won a county, DeSantis was second with 21% of the votes, Haley was 3rd with 19%, and Ramaswamy - my favored candidate - was last with 8% of the vote.  Ramaswamy suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump.

With Ramaswamy out of the race, that leaves three going into New Hampshire.  Haley is expecting a strong showing and has already announced it is a two-person race after Iowa.  In fact, polling in New Hampshire indicates Trump will win with 40% of the vote and Haley will have a strong showing around 30%.  If that holds, Haley will hope for an upset in her home state of South Carolina.  If Trump wins both New Hampshire and South Carolina, the campaign is over.

Will it be Trump v. Biden again?  If so, I would expect Reagan's question: "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"