A Pitiful Display in New Hampshire
Donald Trump, New Hampshire, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, the GOP, and a relevant tidbit of Henry David Thoreau being yelled at by a preacher.
“I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire” wrote Henry David Thoreau, “because I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any day.”
Watching Donald’s good, old fashioned Sermon on Mount Trump on how everyone not enamored with the MAGA beatitudes has sinned and must repent or else threw into sharp relief the pointlessness of horserace primary coverage. This 2024 Primary In Name Only has never been in doubt. The pitiful display of Nikki Haley babbling nonsense about getting “almost half the voters” while Tim Scott played the laughing fool for Trump and second fiddle sidekick to that jackass Vivek – whom Trump actually allowed to speak – drove the point home. None of these individuals had a chance of challenging Trump, and if you charged them with really wanting to challenge Trump in a court of law no conviction could be attained.
Since Nikki Haley is the only one left, Trump spent a good amount of time disparaging her, and at one point threatening the “Ted Cruz’s wife and father treatment” if she didn’t bend the knee and once again return to full faith and fellowship in the congregation of Trump First and the Gimme Gimmes. Ron DeSantis made it six days post-Iowa before resting on the seventh and endorsing Trump. The eschatology of when the inevitable end times for Haley 2024 is down to pre-South Carolina, post-a 30- or 40-point drubbing in the Palmetto State, or taking odds if Nikki lasts the week. But we have enough gospel of Trump to know what happens after that; No matter how much ugly Trump dumps on her between now and then, Nikki Haley will endorse Trump. Happily, with the same false, cringy over smile and talking hands that she sported pretending Iowa went great and New Hampshire went even better while attacking the “political class” that she herself has been at the forefront of for 20 years.
They all do. All the GOP wannabes take their turn like Tim Scott did in New Hampshire Tuesday night where they laugh and smile and slap the back of the man who is publicly burning their dignity in effigy to put a twinkle in his otherwise dim eye. Because they want to be liked by the Trump faithful after Trump. And a Republican Party that has trained a reactionary creature like Donald Trump that they will give him whatever he wants have authored this current display of Trump feeling supremely entitled to everything, all the time, from everyone.
Which is why digging through the numbers, polls, data, and precedents tell a different story than the current parables MAGA Republicans are pushing. Trump is doing what observant folks have long claimed he would do; dominate in the primary with his devoted base while at the same time damaging his general election chances with everyone else. While his path to the nomination is now a flat, wide road, he’s increasingly a pariah to independents, Democrats, and just about everyone else, and the “high floor, low ceiling” of Trump’s support hits the latter.
President Biden in a normal political dispensation of time would be a very vulnerable incumbent. But Joe Biden has once again – as he did in 2020 – received the greatest political gift given to a presidential candidate in modern times. All Joe Biden has to do is be not Donald Trump. There are other factors of course, but barring an economic collapse, Biblical event, a giant squid attacking the Potomac Basin, or some other unforeseen event in the time between now and November’s election is going to be all Trump bad, all the time. The Biden campaign, if it has a lick of sense, will be dumping hundreds of millions into advertising highlighting Trump, mostly in his own words and deeds.
Trump is on the ballot, and nothing is certain, so there is no absolute and it is foolish to do a blanket “he can’t win” statement no matter what the data and trends say. But barring those outside, nearly Biblical events that could happen, we should deal with what is most likely to happen. Which most of this primary coverage hasn’t done by most folks. Joe Biden set a record in votes received in 2020, and with this version of Donald Trump in full blown revenge mode with no filters or restraints, President Biden is mostly likely going to break his own record for turnout in 2024.
And it will all be thanks to Donald Trump, who was at the podium in New Hampshire, surrounded by his disciples of political expediency, shouting at anyone who was refusing to go along with the burdened GOP beast to the meeting house and revel in his greatness. Time will tell if enough folks ignore the shouts and proceed to the mountain anyway, willing to go a bit further for a true word.