By Chris Satullo
I can’t decide which part of last Tuesday’s New Hampshire Republican primary was more exasperating:
- That a twice-impeached rapist and would-be dictator who is in clear cognitive decline won it.
- Or that so many in the political media framed this particular vote as an impressive result for Donald J. Trump.
In case, to maintain your sanity, you weren’t paying attention, Trump won that vote with 54.3 percent, compared to the 43.2 percent garnered by the last opponent standing, Nikki Haley. Only the delusional think Haley still has any chance of denying Trump the Republican nomination for the presidency. (Although she still has a chance to do something useful for the Republic; more on that later.)
Last Tuesday’s result is a little bit like the famous drawing that looks like a duck if you squint one way but like a rabbit if you shift focus. Just one image, but two legit ways of seeing what the pixels add up to.
The duck: Yes, what was once the Grand Old Party is now firmly in the grip of Trump’s tiny and rash-plagued hands. No denying that. And, yes, it’s a most unusual political feat that this whiny liar has pulled off through his unique brand of vicious shrewdness.
No one-term president since Grover Cleveland has managed to garner his party’s nomination after losing it the White House. Trump somehow did that despite racking up 91 criminal indictments, including a passel for fomenting an insurrectionist attack on the nation’s Capitol. History will shake its head in wonder.
And there’s also no denying this: Trump has a substantial chance of beating President Biden in November. The Electoral College tilts his way; Biden’s approval ratings are stubbornly weak.
But here’s the rabbit: Despite headlines from many news outlets using words like decisive, momentum and historic, Trump’s victory margin in the Granite State was far from a clear triumph. It was more like a storm cloud.
Out of habit (or desire for drama), a lot of the political press treated New Hampshire as though it were an early act in a long, open primary process. And, sure, if Trump were just a semi-obscure governor of, say, Missouri, making his first presidential bid, his win would have been impressive. But remember that, within MAGA world, Trump is the rightful president. He insists on being treated as an incumbent; anyone who fails to duly kiss his ring risks his Mob-boss ire and a barrage of nasty insults on Truth Social.
In normal American politics – which, granted, TrumpWorld decidedly is not – when an incumbent lets an upstart earn 43 percent of the Live Free or Die primary vote, that’s an omen of disaster, a sign of near-fatal weakness.
Even more so when that challenger has barely dared to say a critical word about the incumbent. Even more so when you see a strong majority of Haley’s New Hampshire voters, much like the Iowa caucus goers who supported her, telling pollsters this: They either have no intention of voting for Trump in November, or say they won’t do so if he gets convicted of a felony in the interim (as he almost surely will in the stolen documents case).
Without doubt, Trump has a big majority of the Republican party in an iron – and passionately reciprocated – embrace. But recall that the GOP represents only a third of the American electorate. Trump needs to do very, very well among the growing chunk of the electorate that calls itself independent – while also peeling off plenty of DINOs (Democrats in Name Only). In New Hampshire – which allow independents to choose a party primary to vote in – much of Haley’s support came from that type of independent. They’re people who chose the GOP ballot precisely so they could express disgust with Trump.
(It would be churlish of me not to note here that my host on this blog, Mr. Richard Polman, already got these points exactly right in his post immediately after the New Hampshire results came in.)
Trump can most assuredly still win in the fall – but only by drawing successfully to an inside straight as he did in 2016, narrowly winning swing state after swing state after swing state. He would stand little chance against a successful incumbent running in good economic times.
Instead, he’ll face Joe Biden who is…well…wait…a successful incumbent running in good economic times.
Just as Trump is an anomaly – a failed one-term president under a dark ethical cloud who still somehow is adored by his party’s base – so is Biden. He is a skilled, genial incumbent with multiple accomplishments, including a booming economy, yet his approval ratings are down in the basement. Even members of his own party talk about him as though he were a blend of Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding.
The New York Times, in its belated acknowledged of Trump’s “broader weakness” a few days after the New Hampshire vote, still took time to assert that Biden is “widely disliked.” I don’t think that’s quite right. I doubt that most non-MAGA Americans dislike Biden as a person. They dislike the idea that an 81-year-old with a tendency to ramble is their only realistic option besides Trump. So they’re either pouting or pretending it’s not so.
There’s a lot going on here. Public perception of the economy has always lagged well behind the leading indicators that economists monitor – most of which are glowing now, but which until fairly recently showed scary inflation and a threat of recession. Meanwhile, our American penchant for looking at the economy through partisan lenses has worsened as polarization and siloed media have strengthened their grips.
Example: Trump can caterwaul on Truth Social about a “crash” coming soon and not one of his MAGA acolytes will stop nodding their heads long enough to think, “Wait, a crash? You can only have a crash from the heights of a boom. Is our master saying that things actually are great now?”
Unfortunately for Biden, a big chunk of his party is an exception to that rule about donning rose-colored glasses when your guy is in charge. The Democratic left is deeply enmeshed in what I call progressive depressive syndrome. They’re devoted to a narrative that America is a racist, oppressive, exploitative hellscape that has stolen all hope from the young and needs to be rebuilt from the studs. Given that, no news about Biden’s many successes in attacking climate change, job loss, inequality, drug costs or banking greed filters through to them.
Equally worrisome for November, many titular Democrats – whether to Biden’s right or left – seem incapable of understanding the plain fact that presidential elections are a binary choice: If you don’t vote for one major party’s guy, you are helping to elect the other major party’s guy, which in this case happens to be “Dictator on Day 1.”
Between now and November, those of us who see the genuine stakes – competence and compassion vs. a vindictive, authoritarian trashing of our Constitution – need to do all we can to convince those voters that this presidential election is no time to indulge in boutique choices meant to dramatize your superior righteousness and discernment.
If those Dem voters come to their senses, Biden wins. In fact, he wins in a walk if something else happens: Prominent anti-Trump Republicans figuring out how to convince the type of disaffected Republican and ambivalent independent that showed up for Haley in New Hampshire not to slide back into their comfort zone – i.e. reflexively voting Republican for president.
This is where Haley comes in. She’s not going to win – she never had a chance – but she can help save the Republic, while sparing herself from an obituary written in the ink of shame. Haley is now the biggest name amid a flock of otherwise sane Republicans who for years have minimized, excused and indulged Trump’s depredations. She and they can do useful penance now for their cowardly sins against democracy. They can and should speak out boldly, fiercely and repeatedly, from their up-close personal experience, about how unfit, unhinged and unrepentant Trump truly is.
They must fashion a permission structure so that people who view the Republican party as either their cherished home or their most comfortable option can feel OK about rejecting a GOP presidential nominee – just this one crucial time.
They need to drive home, far and wide, this syllogism:
A) True Republicans who revere the Constitution make good presidents and deserve my vote.
B) Donald Trump is a fake Republican who despises the Constitution.
C) Donald Trump does not deserve my vote.
Like Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee says at the end of All the President’s Men, “Nothing much is riding on this except…the First Amendment of the Constitution and maybe the future of the country.”
Get over yourself, Nikki, and get to work atoning.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia