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In today’s edition … Sen. Schatz will introduce an amendment to any defense supplemental urging the pursuit of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians … Trump’s and Haley’s 2024 primary coalitions, visualized … but first …
The campaign
It’s Biden v. Trump, again
If your phone is blowing up with messages from friends who pay little attention to politics and are in disbelief that the election will again be a rematch between President Biden and former president Donald Trump, you’re not alone.
After just two nominating contests, the Republican presidential primary appears to be over.
Trump still has to win nearly 1,200 delegates to officially clinch the nomination, but former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley is probably not going to be a significant obstacle.
New Hampshire was Haley’s best shot. Of all the early primary states, it has the type of voters who fit Haley’s demographic: moderate and independent. She ended up in second place behind Trump, with the former president leading her by around 11 percentage points.
Haley did run strong in some of New Hampshire’s most educated towns.
- She beat Trump by 21 points in Rye, 25 points in Lebanon, 39 points in Durham, 24 points in Stratham, six points in Bedford and 15 points in Peterborough, Bow and Hollis — all towns where at least half of residents 25 and older have bachelor’s degrees. In Hanover, home to Dartmouth College and where nearly 89 percent of residents have college degrees, Haley beat Trump by 73 points.
But those margins weren’t enough to overcome Trump’s strength in the rest of the state.
- Iowa, which held its caucuses last week, was too conservative. In Nevada, Haley has not invested resources to compete because the state Republican Party, which has complete fealty to Trump, set up a caucus on top of the state’s primary to ensure a Trump victory. (Her name will be on ballots in the state’s primary, which doesn’t award delegates.)
“We’re going home to South Carolina,” Haley said last night, saying she’ll stay in the race until her home state’s primary on Feb. 24.
Haley is holding a rally in North Charleston, S.C., today. And she’s also expected to speak at an event in the Virgin Islands, which holds its primary on Feb. 8. (The U.S. Virgin Islands are also a lovely place to relax and unwind. Just saying.)
But Haley faces uphill odds in conservative South Carolina, so this could become one of the shortest contested primaries since the modern system began in 1976. Since then, all seriously contested primaries have had challengers make it to Super Tuesday, typically held in March (including New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley who persisted against Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 Democratic primary despite never winning a state).
Trump’s command
Of course, this primary is different. Trump is pretty much an incumbent, having been president before, and commands a loyal following.
Trump, who is facing 91 felony counts spread across four criminal cases, successfully consolidated support among Republicans even as he consistently tells lies about the 2020 election, which he lost. Few of Trump’s challengers pushed Trump hard on his criminal charges and false election claims, and Haley was not among them.
- “Haley was hesitant to take on Trump directly, caught between the competing imperatives of turning out the state’s undeclared voters without alienating core Republicans who still like the former president. The Trump campaign, meanwhile, seized on her cautious approach, using the vacuum to define her to voters,” our colleagues Maeve Reston and Ashley Parker write.
Hence, the size of the electorate, especially the Republican base, that sympathizes with Trump is quite large and was too hard to overcome.
In the New Hampshire Republican primary, 51 percent of voters erroneously believe Biden did not win the 2020 election. Eighty-six percent of those voters backed Trump. In Iowa, two-thirds of Republican primary voters believe Biden did not win in 2020, according to entrance polls. They overwhelmingly backed Trump, too.
And the Republican establishment, which would have preferred another candidate, has begun to rally around him.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a former member of Senate Republican leadership, came out in support of Trump last night. Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.), who represents a district Biden won by more than seven points in 2020, came out for Trump (kind of).
Expect to see more of this in the coming days.
Biden’s big win
It was also a big night for Biden. He wasn’t on the ballot because the Democratic National Committee chose South Carolina as the party’s first official primary contest, but his overwhelming victory in a write-in campaign was an attempt to show strength despite flagging poll numbers. (Today, we could learn how people in the Democratic primary wrote in “cease-fire” for the war in Gaza as a form of protest.)
- Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) is running a long-shot campaign to defeat Biden, arguing that he is too old and too politically vulnerable to win a general election. He received about 20 percent of the New Hampshire Democratic primary vote.
But the Biden campaign also views this as the start of the general election. “It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee,” Biden said in a statement last night.
His two closest advisers at the White House, Jen O’Malley Dillon and Mike Donilon, are moving over to the campaign, our colleague Michael Scherer reported yesterday, just as the polls in New Hampshire closed.
Biden has hit the campaign trail this week, holding a joint rally with Vice President Harris and warning voters that Trump could further erode access to abortion if elected.
Trump’s weakness are clear. He lost college-educated voters, those making more than $100,000 and both those who define themselves as independents and are registered independents in New Hampshire, according to exit polls.
But where those voters go in a general election is an open question.
What we're watching
On the Hill
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) will introduce an amendment to any supplemental bill urging the pursuit of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. The amendment comes amid growing discontent among Democrats about Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements that a two-state solution is not possible.
We are watching how many Democrats sign on to the measure. Also, there must be a border security agreement before any supplemental for Ukraine and Israel is taken up on the Senate floor. A deal does not yet exist.
Trump’s and Haley’s 2024 primary coalitions, visualized
Trump: “Trump’s biggest boost in New Hampshire came from areas that helped power Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s third-place finish in 2016,” according to a statistical model created by our colleagues Lenny Bronner, Derek Hawkins, Luis Melgar and Diane Napolitano that uses precinct-level results from 2016 and 2024, as well as demographic data, to determine the likely share of voters a 2024 candidate picked up.
- “The former president drew about 89 percent of Cruz’s support — much of it coming from the state’s rural areas — showing how Trump has won over conservatives who were skeptical of him during his first presidential bid.”
- “Trump was weakest among more moderate voting blocs of the GOP, but he still managed to siphon some support from the base that split among Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Chris Christie in 2016. He even got almost a quarter of the base that propelled former Ohio governor John Kasich to a second-place finish that year.”
Haley: “Haley performed well with Kasich’s 2016 base, according to The Post’s model, winning about three quarters of this bloc. But Haley’s overall 43 percent finish on Tuesday was slightly less than the sum of Kasich, Bush, Rubio and Christie’s margins eight years ago. Haley also took only a sliver of Cruz’s support from 2016, reflecting her struggle to win over other parts of the party, especially more conservative voters.”
The latest on the crisis in the Middle East
U.S. forces struck two Houthi anti-ship missiles early Wednesday morning that were about to launch into the Red Sea, U.S. officials said, as part of the effort to crack down on the rebel group’s maritime attacks.
- “U.S. forces identified the missiles in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and determined that they presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and the U.S. Navy ships in the region,” according to a statement released by U.S. Central Command. “U.S. forces subsequently struck and destroyed the missiles in self-defense.”
It is the ninth round of strikes on Houthi targets by the United States since Jan. 11 and comes after U.S. forces carried out separate attacks in Iraq the same day. U.S. forces struck three sites in Iraq used by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia. The strikes were in retaliation for a weekend attack that wounded a small number of American personnel, our colleague Dan Lamothe reports.
Here’s what else you need to know:
- Support grows for a [temporary] buffer zone inside the Gaza Strip: Twenty-one Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip while they were rigging two buildings with mines as part of a broader effort to create a buffer zone along the border to protect Israeli communities from attacks, our colleagues Shira Rubin, Miriam Berger and Hajar Harb report. “The United States has opposed any permanent change to Gaza’s territory, but on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to accept a temporary buffer zone. He said Israelis who have been displaced by rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon must be able to return to their homes.”
- Gulf remains on Israel-Hamas hostage deal: “Israel has offered a two-month pause in the fighting, first reported by Axios, in exchange for a phased release of about 140 remaining hostages,” our colleague Karen DeYoung reports. “Neither Israel nor Hamas has commented publicly on the most recent proposal, although the Associated Press, quoting an Egyptian official, said Hamas has rejected it. Hamas has said in the past that it would not release further hostages until Israel agreed to a complete cease-fire and withdrawal of its troops from Gaza. Israel has said there will be no withdrawal and permanent end to the fighting until Hamas’s leadership and military infrastructure are destroyed.”
- Lawmakers voice concern about presidential authority to strike the Houthis: “Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are starting to raise concerns about Biden’s strategy in the ongoing military campaign against the Houthis, after near-daily strikes on the group over the past two weeks have failed to stop its targeting of ships off the Arabian Peninsula,” our colleague Abigail Hauslohner reports. “A group of bipartisan senators on Tuesday sent a letter to the White House, warning the president that he will need congressional approval to carry the United States deeper into an escalating Middle East war.”
Must reads
From The Post:
From across the web:
- For people fleeing war, U.S. immigration fight has real-life consequences. By the New York Times’s Zolan Kanno-Youngs.
- Arizona Republican Party boss tried to keep Kari Lake out of Senate race by dangling job. By USA Today’s Ronald J. Hansen.
Survivors of the Monterey Park shooting marked a year since a gunman attacked their beloved ballroom dance studio with the most fitting remembrance they could think of: a joyous dance party. pic.twitter.com/jpsqKq1YOV
— Josie Huang (@josie_huang) January 22, 2024
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