Trump's presidential run: a bad bet for Republicans?

"That's a wrap, folks – the match is set," said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. The departure of Nikki Haley from the Republican nomination contest, in the wake of her "entirely predictable walloping" in last week's Super Tuesday primaries, means that the presidential race has finally come down to a straight battle between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The US must choose between a "senile" president "run by his handlers", or a "stupid" president "incapable of listening to his advisers". That's all that's on offer. 

Polling shows that a majority of US voters are deeply depressed by the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch, said Jim Geraghty in The Washington Post, but they can't really complain. Haley did everything she could to prevent this situation. "America, if you wanted different nominees than Trump and Biden, you had to come out and vote for them."

Going Trump's way

Trump is on a roll, said David A. Graham in The Atlantic. The day after the Super Tuesday "romp", the US supreme court dismissed a claim by three states that Trump was ineligible for the ballot in November owing to his role in instigating the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol. The dates of some of Trump's trials have also been pushed back, reducing the chances that he'll receive a criminal conviction before the election. Trump's political success has often appeared to come in the face of "difficulty and disaster", but today everything seems to be going his way. It helps that, for once, the former president is showing a touch of "actual political discipline", said Ross Douthat in The New York Times. He has some serious people running his campaign, has "kept his more bizarre rants confined to the weird microworld of Truth Social", and – partly as a result of all his legal commitments – is doing fewer rallies. The rule of the Trump era is "the lower his profile, the higher his polls".

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Biden's advantage

Biden hopes that that will work in his favour, said Elena Schneider on Politico. His campaign has a $41m cash advantage over Trump, who is weighed down with legal bills. His team is preparing "an onslaught of ads to turn voters' attention away from Biden's age and remind them of Trump's chaotic first term". Biden may be "the most unpopular president in the history of polling", said Marc A. Thiessen in The Washington Post, but he could easily win. The GOP is deeply divided between the dominant Maga wing, which encompasses about two-thirds of its voters, and the non-Maga wing. Trump needs the support of the latter group. According to Fox News analysis, 53% of non-Maga Republicans in Iowa, 57% in South Carolina and 65% in New Hampshire say they won't vote for Trump in November. "If even a fraction follows through on that promise", it could cost him the White House.

The GOP's gamble

The GOP is taking a big gamble with Trump, said The Wall Street Journal. In every vote since his win in 2016, "Republicans have lost or underperformed". It's a bad bet, agreed Eric Levitz on Vox. Polls suggest that Haley's nomination would have all but guaranteed a GOP triumph. In the key swing state of Wisconsin, for instance, where Trump is level-pegging with Biden, Haley polled 15 points ahead of the president. She could have led a proper Republican landslide. With Trump, by contrast – "a candidate that a majority of voters disdain" – the GOP faces the prospect of either a defeat or a narrow win that will tightly constrain its future room for manoeuvre. The conservative movement is missing a "golden opportunity". "Republicans won't get to run against an 81-year-old man with a 56% disapproval rating every election cycle."