UPDATE (March 6, 2024 9:13 a.m. E.T.): Following Donald Trump’s winning performance in Super Tuesday primary elections, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is set to drop out of the 2024 race, NBC projects.
I’ve seen enough. As of publication, former President Donald Trump is already the projected winner for Super Tuesday GOP primary elections in Colorado, Massachusetts, Texas, Alabama, Maine, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia, NBC reports, sealing his status as the Republican Party nominee for the November presidential election.
We knew Trump would “win” Super Tuesday since the moment he announced his 2024 presidential run in November 2022 — almost a year earlier than everyone else in the GOP primary field. Trump assumed, just like the rest of the Republican Party, that the nomination was his for the taking. And it largely was, what with the other candidates running as faint mimeographs in his orbit. But somewhat surprisingly, it wasn’t the cakewalk Trump expected.
Despite facing unprecedented efforts to clear the primary field — including Trump and President Joe Biden changing the primary schedule and Trump’s ongoing emphasis on installing loyalists — former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has continued on. It was one of the things Trump world feared most: Haley harnessed the “never Trump” vote. And while it wasn’t enough to win, it was enough to show that Trump has a general election problem.
Despite never having a chance at winning, Haley’s quest quickly became quixotic, exposing cracks in Trump’s election strategy and structure.
Despite never having a chance at winning, Haley’s quest quickly became quixotic, exposing cracks in Trump’s election strategy and structure. After all, Trump has always run on appealing to the GOP base’s basest nature. He won by shifting the electorate, getting traditionally low-turnout voters to vote for him. If that base’s enthusiasm falters even a little bit, that alone could be enough for Biden to hold on to the presidency.
Haley showed us that there are real fractures not only in Trump’s strategy, but in the GOP primary base. Per The Associated Press, “According to AP VoteCast surveys of the first three head-to-head Republican contests, 2 in 10 Iowa voters, one-third of New Hampshire voters, and one-quarter of South Carolina voters would be so disappointed by Trump’s renomination that they would refuse to vote for him in the fall.” Now that he has 91 criminal counts against him and is heading into a criminal trial in March, it seems even more unlikely that the “never Trump” contingent will change their minds in November.
Trump also doesn’t have the same populist message he had when he ran in 2016 and into his term as president, when he told voters he would “bring back jobs” (a promise that did not come to fruition during his tenure). This time Trump said he was running again “in order to make America great and glorious again” — but voters have reason to be cynical about that promise. According to former GOP Rep. Will Hurd, Trump hopes to use his candidate status as protection against his ever-mounting legal liabilities. Trump took to Truth Social to shoot back at Hurd: “He got SERIOUSLY booed off the stage when he said I was running ‘to stay out of jail.’ Wrong, if I wasn’t running, or running and doing badly (like him & Christie!), with no chance to win, these prosecutions would never have been brought or happened!” The response showcases a common, but wrong, argument of Trump’s: Being popular doesn’t negate one’s legal liabilities.
In fact, despite being handed an enormous legal victory by the Supreme Court when it ruled that he can stay on the ballot, Trump still faces numerous legal and civil challenges. He owes $355 million plus interest for his civil fraud penalty, to start. Then there’s the money he owes E. Jean Carroll ($83 million). Trump’s hush money case starts March 25, for which Trump will once again find himself in court as a defendant. This time, as a defendant who is running for president and answering questions about his alleged hush money payments to an adult film star.
Trump may have “won” Super Tuesday, and he will win the GOP nomination, but this is a president who has never once had any interest in growing his base. He is a president for primary voters only. And Trump has not become a more disciplined politician in his older age. A few months ago, he mused that he would lock up his political enemies. Trump also mused that he would create massive deportation squads. Even Steve Bannon said, as reported by Media matters, “Mass deportations are going to start, if you don’t like that, then don’t vote for President Trump.” Talk about a unifying message. “He lost 40 percent of the primary vote in all of the early states,” Haley pointed out to a group in Minnesota ahead of the Super Tuesday elections, PBS reported. But perhaps even more important and relevant than that is, according to an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll, 43% of Iowa Haley voters said they would vote for Biden if Trump is the GOP nominee. Unlike other Trump challengers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who ran as a less charismatic autocrat, Haley invokes a less scary, more normal, not authoritarian Republican Party. She represents a potential bridge back to a more normal Republican Party. So while she may not win, her mere existence is a win for the restoration of democracy.
Molly Jong-Fast
Molly Jong-Fast is a political analyst for MSNBC, special correspondent for Vanity Fair and host of the podcast "Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast." 
