Haley finally bows out as Trump and Biden prepare for rematch

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Joe Biden and Donald Trump have ended the day in dominant fashion, meaning they're now almost certain to face each other again in November's presidential election.

Nikki Haley, who notched up one surprise victory on Tuesday, beating Trump in the state of Vermont, decided that wasn't enough to keep her in the race. And the next day, she bowed out.

I have no regrets. And although I will no longer be a candidate, I will not stop using my voice for the things I believe in.

So who will Americans, who long told pollsters they did not want a rematch of 2020, do now that that's exactly what they've got? What will both the current president and the former one learn from their first battle four years ago? And what else did we learn from the other primary contests that created headlines on Tuesday? I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist for The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.

Well, it is a reality check for some folks. I think there's been a lot of Americans who've been in denial that they would be confronted with the choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden again, but here it is.

Charlie Sykes is a contributor to MSNBC and the author of the book, How the Right Lost Its Mind. As somebody.

who has been a conservative critic of Trump, it did feel like this week was the closing of that sort of doom loop in which the Republican Party answered every question. Would there be any red line that they would not cross to embrace Donald Trump? And here we are. You know, in the last few days of the campaign, before she folded, Nikki Haley was urging voters, move on from the unhinged chaos. Let's return to normal.

So Nikki Haley, she'd held on longer than some people thought she would. She didn't drop out after Iowa, didn't drop out after New Hampshire, didn't drop out after losing her home state of South Carolina, but now, this week, after Super Tuesday, she did. She had to go, didn't she?

Well, yes and no. I mean, given the fact that, she had, you know, her chances of beating Donald Trump and winning the nomination were always slim and none. So I think the conventional wisdom was, of course, that you pull out after Super Tuesday. She could have hung on a little bit longer. if her goal was to provide a voice for Republicans who were not willing to go along with Donald Trump.

the right thing to do. And I suppose, from that point of view, of remaining viable, the fact that she did win one contest in the little state of New England, state of Vermont, would be a consolation prize. Does it mean anything at all?

It does, but very little. I've given up wish-casting for Lent, so I know that there are a lot of commentators that are drawing hope from the number of votes that she was able to get, you know, 20 to 40 percent of Republican voters who voted against Trump. But I think that we ought to recognize that this is a small subset of the electorate, and these are hyper-engaged voters, and they will not reflect the general election electorate. But yes, I suppose it's always good to know that there are still redoubts against the crazification of the Republican Party, and Vermont has always been somewhat contrarian, and they certainly were again this year.

Yeah, I mean, it's a state that elects Republican governors, but Bernie Sanders, the independent socialist, as its long-time senator, so it's a quirky state, and, as you say, like a little redoubt there of never-Trumpism. The great attention was paid less to her decision, because I think people saw that coming, than to the manner of her announcement of it, and particularly this question of whether or not she would endorse Donald Trump. Now, we spoke on the podcast last week to Mike Murphy, fellow never-Trumper like you, who suggested that what he thought was likely, and also perhaps smartest, would be for her to do a pro forma, you know, minimal endorsement, then disappear for a few years, and then come back to perhaps what you're describing as that mythical post-Trump Republican Party. She didn't quite do that, because she said instead that she was kind of holding out for Trump to prove to her and to her voters that he was worthy of their backing.

But on this question, as she did on so many others, Margaret Thatcher provided some good advice when she said, quote, never just follow the crowd, always make up your own mind. It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that.

What did you think of that, Charlie Sykes?

Well, Nikki Haley never fails to disappoint. I have to say that I was somewhat encouraged by her willingness to go after Trump in the final days of the campaign, but in the end, that was an exit with something of a whimper here. So, no, she did not immediately endorse Donald Trump, but I think that Mike Murphy is probably right that what you're going to see is that she will issue a pro forma endorsement and then probably go to ground. But I think perhaps the reason she didn't endorse him immediately is that the contrast between what she was saying about Donald Trump 48 hours earlier and any endorsement would have been a little bit stark. She's about to find herself in a very sort of dangerous no-man's land between the MAGA forces, which really, of course, hates her because she dared to take on the Orange God King, and the Trump critics, the Never-Trump world, that would be obviously deeply disillusioned if she turns around and then parlays her goodwill into an endorsement of Donald Trump.

The obvious thing you would say after winning a primary contest in the way that Donald Trump has, is that now he needs to go after the voters. he didn't get, those people who backed Nikki Haley. There's an interesting counter view which says, no, those voters are lost to him, they're not going to come back to Donald Trump, and in a way he can offset those voters by burrowing deep into the Democrat space, winning over working class voters in particular, who previously went for Biden but could be lured over to Donald Trump. He is showing signs in polls of doing well, yes, obviously, with white working class voters, he's always done well with them, but particularly among working people of colour, among minorities who previously have lined up in big numbers for Democrats, but in this case seeming to drift over. Just generally, do you sense that there are enough votes there in what was the Democratic coalition that Donald Trump could peel away and make part of his own base?

No, I think that's one of the key battlegrounds, and I think the Democrats are going to have to address several issues, including can they get back some of the white working class voters who have been drifting to the Republicans? Are they seeing erosion among non-white working class voters? That's going to be a steep hill. Another big challenge, of course, is just the whole question of voter apathy, particularly among young voters. Can they motivate people to turn out in the kind of numbers that they are going to need?

right now. Meyer was caught by a piece in one of the American papers this week. that said, a big factor that explains the massive victories he racked up, Donald Trump, in these primaries and also explains his very healthy poll numbers against Joe Biden, and indeed why some minority voters are crossing over from Democrats to Donald Trump. The common factor is a kind of amnesia that voters are forgetting, or have forgotten, what it was like between 2017 and 2021. They've forgotten the day-to-day psychodramas of the Trump presidency, and the Democrats, and Joe Biden in particular, are making a mistake in thinking you just have to say the two words Donald Trump and everyone recoils as they remember how awful that was.

Oh, it is very, very much a thing. I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post where I talked about how lucky Donald Trump has been, as a politician to rise at a moment when we have this political and cultural amnesia where not only do we not remember what happened four years ago, we don't even remember the latest abhorrent thing he said last week. And, of course, one of the classic questions in American politics, going back to the Ronald Reagan era, is are you better off than you were four years ago? And there's a soundbite on social media of Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik saying, well, of course we are much worse off than we were four years ago. To which I think people ought to go, wait, do people remember what was going on four years ago?

I'm declaring a public health emergency of international concern over the global outbreak of novel coronavirus.

Tonight. the virus has now taken at least.

six lives here in the U.

Today I am officially declaring a national emergency.

When, you know, the shutdowns were going on and the economy was beginning to crater, do we remember what a dystopian world early 2020 was? And I do think, to your point, I think people have forgotten that. I also think there have been a number of studies that have shown that large numbers of Americans are just not, have not dialed into this election. They're not aware of many of the things that Donald Trump has said. Brian Kloss calls this the banality of crazy, that there's just been so much crazy, there's been so many falsehoods, that at a certain point we kind of shrug our shoulders and don't pay any attention.

Let's look at the blue side of the aisle, as it were, and Joe Biden, who also was on the ballot in all these states, it was Super Tuesday for him too, he swept the board almost. He suffered a surprise defeat in the territory of American Samoa. To.

Jason Palmer, a self-described entrepreneur and investor, he is going to win the American Samoa Democratic Caucus. This marks President Biden's first loss.

in the 2020 election. So little known is he, I should mention as a side note, that when we were in New Hampshire, producer Danielle asked him to watch her stuff while they were in a cafe in Manchester, New Hampshire. He was just a nice guy who was around. He said, yeah, sure, he'll watch her stuff while she went to get a cup of coffee. He is now a victor in American Samoa, the man who slayed Joe Biden there.

No, this ought to be the week where reality came up and slapped Democrats in the face. There is no unicorn coming over the hill. There is no magical alternative out there. Now, of course, barring some sort of a health issue or something like that, Joe Biden is going to be the nominee, and Joe Biden was always going to be the nominee. And I think that's something just to keep in mind.

And the path completely cleared, formally at least, because he's only real challenger, in the sense of an actual known politician, was Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota. He dropped out of the race on Wednesday. You know, young, fresh face. He can perform OK on a stage, but it seems like he's done himself more harm than good in the Democratic Party with this effort.

No, I think it's an interesting question. Who will be forgotten more quickly, Jason Palmer or him? Because he never had a chance. And if there was tremendous disaffection with Joe Biden, he would have done better. Dean Phillips would have scored better.

happen. It didn't. And the receptacle for any disaffection was not Dean Phillips, but rather the mystery candidate known as Uncommitted.

But the uncommitted option has gained two delegates. They gained them last week after some.

progressives in Michigan urged voters to protest President Biden and his response to the Israel-Hamas.

war. Several states followed the lead that Michigan has, in which Democrat voters were allowed to that option of uncommitted. People took that, you know, in varying numbers in different places, but enough to be noticed. A lot of people think that is a serious political problem for him. We've talked on the podcast specifically about Michigan, specifically about the city of Dearborn, which has a large Arab-American community.

problem it is? I do think they realize that they have a problem because, as you point out, these are not big numbers, but they are strategically placed in such a way as to have disproportionate impact on the outcome of the election. Those two states alone, Minnesota and Michigan, Joe Biden must win both of those states. I do think there is some recognition that there is a problem. You can see this in some of the rhetoric from Joe Biden and from the Vice President.

I think, mindful of this, Kamala Harris, the Vice President, gave a very trenchant speech calling for an immediate ceasefire, for more humanitarian aid to get through, saying no more excuses.

There must be an immediate ceasefire.

I think a lot of people read that dialing up of the rhetoric as at least a gesture to those, as it were, uncommitted voters, Democrats, who are disaffected. I suppose the big question, and it will take some time to know, is whether those Arab Americans, many Muslim Americans, will put this behind them come November, or whether this has broken the bond of trust that they had before with Joe Biden.

That is exactly the question. It's very hard to restore a bond of trust that's broken in that particular way. However, we have many months to go before November, and, given the political news cycle here, it's very hard to know what will be top of mind later in the year. So it's difficult to know how that question will be answered.

Let's just ask you a question about the wider messaging. Joe Biden has signaled that he is going to make November a battle for the soul of the nation, and particularly about democracy. You and I were speaking before his big State of the Union speech that he's due to give on Thursday night, Friday morning, UK time. Is it your sense that that is the right core message for Biden if he wants re-election? Or, and Elizabeth Warren and others are trying to suggest the message might be better placed to be about bread and butter issues, that Joe Biden's got the cost of insulin down for diabetics, that job growth is up.

butter in the economy? I think there's a slight downside, and maybe I'm going to demonstrate that I'm a little bit jaded about all of this. I do completely believe that the election is about the soul of the nation, is about recovering democracy. I believe that very, very strongly. On the other hand, I'm not sure that simply repeating those kinds of phrases is going to be sufficient.

Let's just rattle through some other decisions that were taken by voters on Super Tuesday, because it's not only the presidential race, there were other primary contests. I'll just run through a few, and you tell me what's the pick, the one we should be looking at. In California, we now know that the Senate race, the battle to fill the seat left by the late Dianne Feinstein, is going to be between Democrat Adam Schiff and a former baseball player, Steve Garvey. A lot of attention on the governor's race in North Carolina.

Right now, NBC News has projected that the controversial lieutenant governor of that state, you see it here, Mark Robinson, has won the primary against his competitors here, likely to go up now. North Carolina's first.

black lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, is going to be the party's candidate for governor in November. He has a history of making some pretty seriously inflammatory comments about race, about gender, but a particular record of attacking Jews. He will be up against Democrat Josh Stein, who is himself Jewish and is currently the state's attorney general. That's going to make that a very intensely watched race. And then finally, in Arizona, it wasn't a result of a primary, but it's a decision from the incumbent senator, Kirsten Sinema.

out at you? Well, I'm fascinated by what happened in North Carolina. I mean, this is really an amazing story because that is very much a swing state. It will be very much in play in November. And Republicans.

want to go back to the America where women could not vote, Robinson said in a newly resurfaced video of his remarks at a March 2020 event. And so,

once again, what Republicans have done by bowing the Yamaga is to nominate a candidate in a very, very winnable race that I think they're likely to lose, they're likely to throw it away. And if also, North Carolina then goes, you know, flips to the Democratic column in the presidential race, this will be a huge political blunder. So, I think a lot of focus on North Carolina.

Yeah, we'll be watching all those races here on the podcast. Now, Charlie, you know that because you've been with us before that we always like to ask our guests a what else? question, something completely different. And this week, Elon Musk, obviously one of the, by many accounts, the world's richest man, said he's not going to give money to either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. And that came after reports that he had met Trump in Florida over the weekend, so there was a lot of speculation about that.

X? The very fact that we're talking about, you know, what this one billionaire is going to do versus another billionaire, can we just pause on that for a moment? That, you know, while we've been focusing on Donald Trump, we have had the rise of this political oligarchy in America. And I say this as a political conservative, that there's something deeply disturbing about the impact of a handful of tech titan billionaires who have so much more clout and so much more influence than, you know, even millions of other Americans. I mean, literally the votes of millions of Americans.

sobering thought, we thank you, Charlie Sykes. Thanks so much for joining me on Politics Weekly America.

It's always a pleasure. Thank you, Jonathan.

And that is all from me for this week. Do check out our new series on artificial intelligence. It's called Black Box, with each episode following a different story. Episode two, which has just been released, is a mind-bending tale of a six-month Guardian investigation into a company called Clothoff. It generates deepfake porn images and has been causing havoc around the world.

This is The Guardian.