How 'long shot' Nikki Haley underscores Biden’s 'vulnerabilities'

31 August 2023

Poll after poll released in late August shows Donald Trump as the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary. The second- place candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is way behind him so far and is showing no signs of closing the gap.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is typically in fourth or fifth place in those polls. Haley's supporters have been arguing that if she were to receive the GOP nomination, she would be the most difficult candidate for President Joe Biden to defeat. And journalist Walter Shapiro, in an article published by the liberal/progressive-leaning New Republic on August 31, doesn't disagree.

"While still a long shot for the nomination," Shapiro argues, "she has emerged as the most plausible conventional Republican in the race. Both Mike Pence and Tim Scott are too passionate in their socially conservative views, notably their strict anti-abortion positions, to appeal to swing voters in the general election. And Chris Christie, for all his belated anti-Trump zeal, is anathema to most voters, with his unfavorable ratings hitting as high as 60 percent in some national polls."

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Shapiro stresses that the point of his article is not to "lionize Haley," but to point out how much of a battle she could give incumbent Biden if, by some chance, she became the nominee.

"Haley — for all her flaws and ideological contortions — serves as a potent reminder that Biden and the Democrats could be vulnerable to a Republican nominee who is not a conspiracy-minded authoritarian with social views lifted from 'The Handmaid's Tale," Shapiro observes. "While Trump, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy eagerly take right-wing positions that are easy to pillory, Haley is much harder to pigeonhole. There are four notable issues where she has taken politically shrewd positions that could flummox Democrats."

Those issues, according to Shapiro, are: (1) "abortion," (2) "climate change," (3) the "national debt," and (4) "Ukraine."

"If the Republicans were a rational political party," Shapiro explains, "they would quickly grasp that Haley's policy positions, as well as her persona as an Indian-American woman, make her probably the strongest candidate against Biden. So far, all the evidence suggests that the Republicans would rather win the hearts of the far right than win the White House. But if the GOP ever shakes off its cultish devotion to Trump — admittedly, an unlikely 'if' in the 2024 campaign — then the Democrats would truly have an electoral fight on their hands."

Read The New Republic's full article at this link.

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