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Has anyone seen Republican Nikki Haley supporters in the wild?
I read a paywalled article the other day in Australian media optimistically hoping for a sudden realignment of fortunes, that Trump might possibly lose the primary.
The article is realistic that Haley's chances are quite low but it favours her nonetheless. I also saw NYT charts that said Haley won the debates. I still doubt that the NYT knows what makes for a good Republican candidate. Their support may be toxic.
Of course, there are polls showing that Haley is coming close to Trump. The funny thing is that nearly all the unrehearsed commentary I've seen about Haley is extremely negative. Even the Boomers commenting below the Australian article seem to favour Trump. Online people have mocked her for the 'I wear heels. They’re not for a fashion statement. They’re for ammunition' comment, which is admittedly pretty bizarre. I never saw any support for her, only people urging Trump not to pick her as VP. Even DeSantis had some traction on twitter, even if it was just his supporters getting shouted down by the overwhelming Trump chorus.
But I'm slightly self-aware, it's no good saying 'well nobody I know voted Nixon' when I'm not even American. Is Haley the new astroturf candidate like Jeb Bush or am I living in an infobubble? Should we all just trust the polls that say she's the primary challenger? Do you see people in real life or online who favour her? If you do, are they actually Republican primary voters as opposed to Democrats? Do any of you support Nikki Haley? Does she have a chance, perhaps if Trump is sent to prison?
Basically, nobody on the Internet supported Joe Biden, but he was the Democratic nominee easily.
I'm not saying Haley is going to do that, but the loud online people are all Trumpian, just like the loud people online in 2020 were all Bernie supporters. It's just Trump also has more support among the rest of the party.
Haley at say, 20% is not a shocking number, and ending up at say, 35-40% in New Hampshire, a very moderate state that Haley is putting a lot of time into wouldn't be surprising at all. So, a few outlier polls currently showing her within 5 or 10 in New Hampshire aren't out of line.
I also think you're likely in your own bubble. The type of people who support Haley, are likely not on media you show, or in areas where you are. Also, NYT polling isn't polling NYT readers, it's usually polling people who watched the debate.
But, as somebody else noticed, the type of person who likely supports Haley at the moment is a combination of college-educated center-right voters, normie suburban voters, and such, that for obvious reasons, don't mention their politcal beliefs on the Internet a lot, because they'll get called RINO's by most of the party, but also are too conservative to ever be Democrat's.
and all it took was fundamental changes to nomination rules specifically to undermine a Bernie Sanders compared to 2016, quite a bit of obvious fraud at the Iowa caucus for Pete to "win," and then rely on machine black politics in SC for a totally legitimate and aboveboard "win" for Biden, followed quickly by behind-the-scenes Obama/Party scheming for all other candidates to drop out and support Biden for Super Tuesday
in hindsight, it's easy for things to seem inevitable and "easy," but that's just not what happened in the 2020 Dem primary
the GOP doesn't have this amount of power which is why they lost against Trump in 2016; they can scheme and ignore voices/votes like they did against a marginal Ron Paul in 2012, but the party fundamentally doesn't have the power to undermine a candidate as popular as Bernie with their voter base let alone Trump who is far more popular among GOP voters than Bernie is with Democrat voters
there is zero chance this happens to Trump
there have already been attempts lead by sniveling GOP schemers to adjust winner-take-all delegate rules to undermine Trump which failed, not that their passing would have meaningfully affected the outcome of the GOP nomination anyway
edit:
the loudest popular online people should be Trumpian given his sheer popularity but it's not all and as far as I can tell, the support for other candidates, Desantis especially, is entirely online
I think it's important to remember that Biden led in the polls for most of the 2020 campaign season, only falling off the lead after performing surprisingly poorly in the early primaries. This is difficult to remember, because the media class was never all-in on a Biden candidacy and was looking to prop up alternatives to take the so-called moderate lane, most notably Klobuchar and Buttigieg. The problem was that neither of those two had a chance of getting broad support among black voters. After South Carolina proved that they would support Biden regardless of how many people wrote his obituary, it was clear to the other moderates that they had no lane left; Biden would win the South by huge margins while they fought against each other and struggled to keep up with Bernie and Warren in the other states. The only path either of them had was through a brokered convention, and that's not a good way to go. So they dropped out and supported the moderate with the best chance.
I digress, though. The lesson to be drawn from this is that dominance in polls means nothing once the actual elections start. Biden's lead wasn't as big as Trump's but it was big enough. If DeSantis or Haley or whoever goes into Iowa and wins, or is at least competitive, then it's a whole different ballgame, and 2020 shows that there's a strong possibility of that happening. Buttigieg was only polling around 7% when he won Iowa. And if that happens in 2024 it will throw the whole Trump campaign into a tailspin that they may not be able to recover from. I'm not saying that will happen, but it's a distinct possibility. Maybe there's a Trump constituency similar to black southerners who can buoy him later in the primaries, but again, maybe not. We'll find out soon enough.
Yes, thank you for reminding me Biden had leads in national polling leading up to the first primaries. My memory is his polling tanked after his bad losses in Iowa and New Hampshire to out of the top 3. The media was also fawning over Kamala and pushing Booker, one of which failed because Kamala is so dislikable and she dropped out early and Booker who withdrew before the SC contest but would have likely gotten black support in South Carolina. Both of which dropped out before the SC primary because a deal was struck for Jim Clyburn to deliver the machine black votes to him and he did, saving Joe Biden's campaign. None of this was written-in-stone and it took quite a bit of effort to accomplish. It was neither easy nor inevitable.
Biden +~5-10 in national polling isn't just "not as big as Trump's," it's not even in the same category because Trump is polling near or over 50% in most primaries, including all the first ones. Biden was polling behind multiple other candidates in the early primaries and lost those primaries, coming in 4th? in Iowa. For comparison, Trump is +50 in national polling and well over 50%. That 50% number is a magic one in polling and more or less signals the contest is over. Comparing the 2020 Democrat primary with the 2024 GOP primary is difficult because the 2024 GOP Primary is the least competitive primary in the modern era and it's not close. The fact it exists at all is because many in GOP leadership and the candidates hope Trump will somehow be removed from the contest. All of the manufactured and curated media dialogue and blitz and ads are contingent on this.
The gameplan of the early primaries is to do well enough to convince other campaigns to drop out as donor dollars dry up and media pressure escalates. Trump isn't going to drop out due to primary performance. Trump will never have fundraising issues. He won't be pressured by media derps. He will get through the primary season and will get to the convention. The only path forward for the other GOP candidates is for Trump to be removed; that's the only distinct possibility. If this happens and the GOP does do anything other than run Trump anyway, they will not only lose the general election badly but will likely kill the party.
The reason why Democrats have changed their "primary" system and removed Iowa and NH from the lead primary contests is because they know Biden does poorly in them and is just another example of the Democrats ability and willingness to exercise Party power to shield their preferred candidate. The contrast between Democrats and the GOP is stark.
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The Democratic primaries front-load a few states that tend to lean Bernie, but I knew back in 2020 that as soon as the Southern states voted Bernie would probably get crushed by black mainstream Democrats coming out to support the known item long-term mainstream Democrat and Obama VP. And then Biden would continue to do well in flyover states where, unlike in Bernie-loving college towns, voters want familiar Biden and sure thing electability rather than risking Sanders. Everybody except Bernie and Biden dropping out of course helped Biden, but I doubt that Bernie would have won even without it. He would have seemed like a plausible primary winner for longer than in the real scenario, but I doubt that would have been enough to overcome Biden's numerical advantage.
Biden was polling nationally around 5th place after New Hampshire before South Carolina. It was definitely a do-or-die moment and it wasn't a sure thing. Change a few small details and Biden absolutely could have lost.
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Had Bernie won in Iowa, Nevada, and NH, and lost SC, I think he would have had too much support for Democrat Party scheming to take it from him and he would have won the nomination which is why the party engaged in fraud to get Pete Buttwhatever the "win" in Iowa and more shenanigans to get a split in NH. At the time, Biden was doing horribly. The reason there is so much effort put into the early primaries is because they significantly affect the subsequent race and discussion.
For all this "inevitability" talk here and elsewhere, that is not my memory at the time or the hottakes of anyone at the time. In hindsight, everyone's memory trends toward things being inevitable when that's just not the case a lot of the time.
Would Bernie have gotten the nomination? I don't know, I would guess probably but there is ample room for more Party power. What I'm mostly arguing against is the sort of rewriting of history to remember this period as "easy" and inevitable, which it was not.
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No, Trump is legitimately popular among the base. WTA delegate rules are dumb, though.
But, by "party scheming," you mean Obama called up people and said, "hey, sure seems you all agree with each other, so support Joe since he's our best shot." Like, Twitter joked about moderate voltron when MSNBC did it in polling, then was very mad when it happened. The Iowa & SC is just whining - the number of people shifted by Pete "winning" as opposed to Bernie couldn't fill up a Starbucks, and again, yes, you have to appeal to actual voters in a state to win, and guess what in South Carolina, that's the supposed "uneducated" black voters.
That just shows, and I say this, as a left-wing social democrat, how united the moderate wing was, and how weak and divided the left-wing of the party was, and how much a failure Bernie was, when between 2016 & 2020, he lost support in many working class areas he'd won in 2016 and failed to reach out to black voters in the South, that he needed to win.
Also, by fundamental calendar changes, you mean, making more contests actual democratic primaries instead of weird caucuses, yeah, they did that, and that was a good thing if you think the party nominee should actually have popular support.
The actual problem dead-enders who still think Bernie was screwed over don't get is that a lot of people like Bernie, but they liked Biden too, but they made a choice they thought Biden had a better chance of winning.
The median Bernie voter is the girl from this news story - (https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/10/19/boston-woman-dunkies-fenway-voting-video/) - who said she was voting for Joe Biden. She said she would’ve voted for Bernie Sanders but “it’s a team sport," not upset doomer blackpilled folks on Twitter.
I say this all as somebody who voted for Bernie twice, but both times, saw massive flaws in how he and his team were approaching the primary, including his manager saying all they needed to worry about was winning 1/3 of the vote.
No, I mean by party scheming that Barack Obama and other Democrat Party insiders came up to trade admin appointments and racial politics wins in order for all other opponents to collapse and support Biden.
do you think WTA rules help popular candidates like Bernie or Trump which the party doesn't like or harms them? whether you like them or not is irrelevant
whether or not something is a "good thing" is irrelevant as to whether or not the changes harmed a candidate like Bernie or helped him
what I mean is the rule changes harm candidates like Bernie; the changes put control in the hands of the "government-run" primary system controlled by machine politics who count the mail-in "votes" in population centers instead of require motivated voters and ground game to win the day, something Bernie was exceptionally good at
contrary to claiming this requires "actual popular support," it requires pieces of paper to be counted at centralized counting centers; for example, the total accidental mistake which wasn't found until a whistleblower appeared in the 2021 NYC mayoral primary which by pure happenstance gave 135,000 votes to the Party supported candidate Garcia over current Mayor Adams
If most of the party supports a moderate candidate but multiple moderate candidates compete so that a radical candidate wins, is that a better representation of the voters?
Why is moderate / radical the only axis in your scheme? Who's to say that all flavors of "moderate" are equal to all voters?
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my comment is to dispute the claim the Biden nomination was "easy" and/or inevitable using my memory of events as well as specifics of what happened during the 2020 nomination to support that dispute
I'm not claiming Bernie should have won the nomination or that it would be "better" or that any of the agenda driven policy choices which changed the way Democrat primaries were done were "good" or "bad," but that they were driven by the disputed and messy 2016 nomination debacle specifically in to undermine a candidate like Bernie. Bernie's 2020 loss wasn't inevitable or "easy," it took quite a bit of scheming and planning and tactics to avoid another 2016 debacle.
In those terms, no, but what does this have to do with the topic at hand? If you're attempting to make a comparison between the above hypothetical to the real world in the 2020 primary with the real 2020 candidates I would dispute both your characterizations and the simplification of candidate preference.
Which candidates were "moderate" and why? Which were "radical" and why? "Radicals" and "moderates" are not interchangeable which is why they typically have differing supporters. Is it true that a person who prefers a "moderate" when asked would prefer any moderate compared to any particular "radical"? No, this can be seen in pretty much any polling cross-tab. If we ask people specific policy positions and then graft that onto candidates, do they prefer the "moderate" or "radical" candidate (labels used with agendas)? It's an easy hypothetical which appears to have a simple answer, but I think when we apply it to real world politics it doesn't accurately predict voter preferences.
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Oh, you're somebody who thinks everybody is rigged. Never mind then.
But, to anybody reading, what he describes is called typical coalition politics. Nobody is honor-bound to continue to run for office if they think by dropping out and getting something in exchange, or because they prefer that candidate over the other, somebody will have a better chance. Like, it's not going to be corrupt when Vivek drops out and supports the guy closest to him - Trump. Like, why did people expect the other candidates to just allow Bernie to win the primary with 35% of the vote and do nothing about it? Plus, much of the moderate voltron didn't get anything or use racial politics - Amy Klobuchar got nothing. She's still Senator of Minnesota, and she was before that. She was the other major part of the moderate voltron, and the reality is, Mayor Pete was a strong enough candidate that he would've gotten a gig in the Bernie administration, just like ironically, everything points to Kamala being Bernie's VP choice.
Again, Biden had things to offer candidates w/ views closer to him. The issue is, Bernie (and his supporters) upset the one person somewhat close to him, not that it would've mattered in the long term, as even during the primary, Biden was actually enough Warren's supporters 2nd choice that Biden would've still won
I think a popular candidate will win regardless of the rules. Trump was that, Bernie wasn't. Unfortunately. But, to a certain extent, it's his own fault. He and his supporters didn't realize much of his support in 2016 was anti-Hillary, not ideological, and when somebody like Biden showed up, those people would move to him, and like I said, he did virtually nothing to try to win over black Southern Democrat's in the four years between 2016 & 2020.
"require motivated voters and ground game to win the day, something Bernie was exceptionally good at"
Yes, I believe in one person, one vote, not some votes being worth more because they care more. Which is why I oppose caucuses, and support primaries with same-day registration. What you wanted was a minority of the party to win the nomination. Sorry, Charlie.
Back in the old days, when often no candidate had a clear mandate going into the convention, and it was there that the deals were hammered out - things were just more interesting back then. Every election cycle, it seems to me, the D and R candidates are decided earlier and earlier, and the national conventions became pointless coronations by 1988.
Now the nominees are set in stone even before the election year and all we get to look forward to is month after month of attack ads and partisan news leaks. I wish I could go to sleep and wake up on the morning of November 5.
GOP race would be interesting if Trump wasn’t running, ideologically and practically. Wouldn’t necessarily go down to convention negotiation, but it could.
Yeah, it's interesting that a lot of people's annoyance with a rematch and politics being dominated by old people will basically be done by 2028 - regardless of your views of any of them, all of the possible 2028 candidates in both parties (except for I guess Trump, if he loses in 2024), are all of normal politician age (40s to 60s), and even Congressional leadership will be younger as Pelosi has been replaced McConnell has been replaced, and there's a decent shot Schumer may retire in 2026, or step back from leadership.
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