Following tonight's vote in New Hampshire, it seems clear that Nikki Haley's odds of beating Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination are about as strong as me winning a billion dollars in a lottery.
Same is true of Dean Phillips beating Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, though his odds are even lower.
Phillips is on track to get about 20% of the vote in New Hampshire, where Biden wasn't even on the ballot due to his commitment to have South Carolina be the first state to award Democratic delegates.
Losing so badly when votes for Biden had to be write-ins is pathetic. Time for Phillips to stop his quixotic campaigning and start working to reelect the Biden/Harris ticket.
Because my main takeaway from the New Hampshire results is that things just got real. Like many Democrats, I've been dreaming that Biden would decide to be a one-term president and allow fresher, younger Democratic faces vie for the nomination. Like, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
But my attitude changed while watching the election results come in on MSNBC, and seeing Trump make a typically obnoxious victory speech that featured his usual assortment of lies, which included a false claim that he won New Hampshire in both the primary and general election in 2016 and 2020.
Not true. Trump lost the state to Clinton in 2016 and to Biden in 2020.
Part of the talk on MSNBC was about how many people haven't been able to believe that Republicans are going to nominate Trump again, even though polls, and now a primary result, point to this being a near certainty.
New Hampshire was Nikki Haley's best shot at defeating Trump in a primary. That state allows unaffiliated voters to cast a ballot in the Republican primary. An exit poll showed that Haley did well with those independents, but registered Republicans tilted strongly toward Trump.
So while Haley could do quite well in the general presidential election this November, her problem, and it's a giant one, is that she is unpopular among Republicans and she's seeking the GOP nomination, not an independent nomination.
Haley probably will stay in the race until the South Carolina primary, where she believes her popularity as a two-term Governor will help her defeat Trump. It won't. South Carolina is Trump territory, filled with Republican evangelicals who absolutely adore him.
The Biden campaign must be happy that Trump now has a clear path to the nomination, since Haley polled considerably better against Biden than Trump does.
With her effectively out of the race, Biden/Harris can focus on what worked for them in 2020: demonizing Trump (not hard at all, given how much demonic material Trump spews every day in talks and social media posts) while emphasizing the solid sanity of the Democratic ticket.
Once voters realize that it's going to be Biden vs. Trump again, even though this is a dismaying prospect, reality will set in. If someone doesn't believe Trump should be given the reins of presidential power again, the only real alternative is to vote for Biden.
That's why my attitude toward Biden changed as soon as I saw that Haley performed poorly in New Hampshire, and Phillips even worse.
Yes, I'd prefer a different Democrat run against Trump. But since it's almost certainly going to be Biden, I've got no choice but to back Biden strongly -- because the prospect of another four years of Trump in the White House fills me with dread.
(Also, panic, sadness, revulsion, and just about every other negative emotion.)
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