Nikki Haley wasn’t going to win the Republican Party presidential nomination based on a single narrow victory in Vermont while getting trounced everywhere else and so yesterday she folded her tent, having lasted longer than anyone else in challenging Donald Trump’s cult-like hold over the no-longer Grand Old Party.
That she didn’t endorse him is a thin hope that she will withhold her backing — and her voters and donors and supporters will do likewise. Or maybe she will soon enough fall in line as Mitch McConnell did, and pledge loyalty to Trump.
Haley’s departure is bad for her and it’s bad for the party and it’s bad for the country, as Trump cruises towards a third consecutive nomination. No one wants a repeat of the awful 2020 contest between Trump and Joe Biden, but that’s what we are getting.
Biden said a while back that he is running to stop Trump, the same reason he ran last time. However, if there was no Trump, with his not-secret threats to democracy and constitutional norms, then maybe Biden could retire.
But Trump pushes on, perhaps to erase his 2020 loss (which really happened, fair and square) and take revenge on those he perceived betrayed him, perhaps to try to raise money for his costly legal defense and staggeringly high civil court judgments, perhaps to try to win in order to self-pardon himself from his federal indictments or perhaps for all those reasons.
Also packing it in yesterday was Congressman Dean Phillips, who quit the Democratic race. He liked Biden’s policies and he liked Biden, but argued that Biden couldn’t beat Trump. Democrats didn’t take up the offer from Phillips. And we will see in November if Phillips’ dire prediction is correct.
What this also means is that the April 2 New York presidential primary has no value to anyone and is a $25 million waste of taxpayers’ money, including eight days of early voting starting on Saturday, March 23. It’s not the normal nine days of early voting because March 31 is Easter Sunday. But instead of keeping the polls closed just for one day, we should cancel the whole presidential primary.
The Republican ballot lists Trump, Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie. They have all quit except for Trump. The Democratic ballot has Biden, Phillips and Marianne Williamson. The New Age guru/kook Williamson quit and then unquit. She may very well quit again. And on the part of the Democratic ballots that actually matters, delegates, only Biden offered a slate of delegates so Williamson isn’t competing for anything. (Republican ballots don’t list delegates in this state)
The two chairs of the Legislature’s election committees, Assemblymember Latrice Walker and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, should quickly pass a bill that requires presidential primary candidates to recertify their intention of running. When the quitters don’t respond, the state Board of Elections can then cancel the primary, as New York never runs primaries with single candidates.
There are no other public offices or party positions on the April ballot. Any absentee ballots that were already mailed out can be thrown away.
With the top of the two tickets settled, it’s going to be very long eight months until November. New York taxpayers should at least save $25 million and avoid a useless exercise.
