The race to the White House is now a matter of two. Election night on Super Tuesday confirmed the absolute dominance of Joe Biden and Donald Trump over their parties, with landslide victories in nearly all 16 contested states and territories. And their latest victims were paid: the only alternative candidate to the Republican tycoon, Nikki Haley, announced yesterday that she is throwing in the towel due to her lack of support. Hours later, Democratic hopeful Dean Phillips – who never posed a real threat to Biden – did the same and suspended his campaign against the president.
“In all probability, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate”, acknowledged Haley in a short speech from Charleston (South Carolina), in the electoral hangover of Super Tuesday. He was only able to win one state, Vermont, a Democratic stronghold that is not representative of the Republican voter base. “I congratulate him and wish him the best, like anyone who wants to be president of the United States.”
After months of sharp criticism, Haley did not announce her explicit support for Trump in the battle against Biden in November, as did other exaspirants such as Ron DeSantis or Vivek Ramaswamy. “Even though I will no longer be a candidate, I will not stop using my voice for the things I believe in,” she said. “I have always been conservative and I have always supported the Republican candidate”, he recalled, but hinted that this time he will not endorse the tycoon, quoting his great reference, Margaret Thatcher: “Never limit yourself to following the crowd. Always decide for yourself. Now it’s up to Donald Trump to win the votes of those in our party and outside who didn’t support him, and I hope he does.”
Surprisingly, Biden and Trump will fight a duel on November 5, with the permission of the independent candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who continues to collect signatures, state by state, to be able to run in the election. Trump will need the support of moderate Republicans and independents who have aligned themselves with Haley in the primary process. But it will be a difficult task: According to exit polls since the election year began, about 40% of Haley voters would rather stay home or support Biden than vote for Trump.
The scenario that drew the electoral map of Super Tuesday is the rerun of the presidential duel that took place four years ago. A dispute between two unpopular octogenarians (aged 81 and 77) whom six out of ten Americans reject every time they are asked in the polls, but which has been confirmed every time they have gone to the polls.
Without mentioning Haley, Trump called for Republican Party unity in his victory speech at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida: “We have tremendous talent and we need unity. We will have it soon”. He did mention her, however, in a post on Truth Social after hearing the news of his departure: “Haley was defeated last night, by record numbers,” he said, and falsely claimed that “ much of his money came from radical left-wing Democrats, as did many of his voters, nearly 50%, according to polls. Finally, she picked up the gauntlet of who she was as ambassador to the United Nations during her tenure: “I would like to invite all of Haley’s supporters to join the largest movement in our nation’s history.”
The Republican race began with 14 contenders, which were quickly whittled down to two after Trump’s landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses in January. Haley, ex-governor of South Carolina and the only woman who has stood up to him, had promised to stay on the right foot until Super Tuesday, the date with the most votes and delegates at stake in the primaries. But despite having raised the multimillion-dollar influx of money from major donors, its support had been called into question after the crushing defeat on Super Tuesday.
In late January, Trump declared war on Haley’s donors and threatened to expel them “permanently” from his MAGA movement. After being ordered to pay $83 million for defaming columnist E. Jean Caroll and more than $400 million for fraud in New York, his campaign now needs more than ever to raise funds, which he is simultaneously using to pay for his legal fees and finance their propaganda and electoral campaign events.
Haley has only managed to win in two anecdotal elections in the two months since the election year began: the predominantly Democratic District of Columbia – which voted for Biden in 2020 with 92% – and where only about 2,000 people participated, and Vermont, another liberal stronghold with a higher proportion of independents, where he narrowly won by four points.
“It takes a lot of courage to run for president. This is especially true in the current Republican Party, in which so few dare to tell the truth about Donald Trump,” Biden said yesterday in a statement. “Haley was ready to tell the truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to distinguish right from wrong, about his cowardice in front of Vladimir Putin,” he acknowledged. And he questioned his voters: “Trump made it clear that he does not want Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: there is a place for them in my campaign.”
Biden and Trump are already focusing their speeches on the November 5 election. An election with the shadow of the insurrection encouraged by the Republican four years ago, when he did not accept the result of the election and tried to prevent its certification with the Capitol. Today he is accused in four criminal cases, for these facts and for others of no less seriousness, such as having taken a hundred classified documents with him after leaving the White House.
The election, which will pit the oldest president in the country’s history against the last to achieve that milestone, will also be marked by the war in Gaza, for which Biden again faced a protest vote on Tuesday in states like North Carolina (12%) or Minnesota (20%). And for irregular immigration, which has reached records during his mandate, while immigration reform remains blocked in Congress. But, especially, it will be unprecedented due to the strong unpopularity of the two candidates.
