Here’s the main reason Trump won New Hampshire: Chris Hayes

In a Tuesday, January 23 op-ed published following Donald Trump's win over Nikki Haley in The New Hampshire Primary election, MSNBC host Chris Hayes argues that there's one key reason the former president was able to "bludgeon her down the stretch."

Hayes suggests, "Maybe there was never going to be a successful alternative this primary, but in the end, no one really tried to provide one."

The progressive host notes that when the 2024 campaign began months ago, he wondered "what ideological vision Trump’s competitors would use to try to woo voters away from him," but ultimately, "the answer ended up being incredibly boring. Trump offers his voters a unified vision to replace Reagan-era rhetoric: He’ll be a strongman who will enact retribution and pain on all the people you don’t like."

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Regarding the MAGA hopeful's rivals, Hayes notes Florida Governor Ron "DeSantis tried his own cramped and strained version of Trump’s nastiness but it was just too weird and online to work. He just sounded like an angry nerd. But the rest of the field, including Haley, basically just tried to run as pre-Trump Republicans. Their messaging did not suggest much insight into why he was able to pry the party from them in the first place."

He emphasizes, "In the end, there are lots of reasons why we’ve ended up with Trump back in a position of party dominance. The indictments that perversely enabled a kind of martyrdom irresistible to the GOP base and DeSantis’ utter lack of charisma and cringey, ham-fisted campaign both had a lot to do with it. But fundamentally, the reason Trump won is that you can’t beat something with nothing, and the non-Trump wing of the Republican Party still hasn’t come up with something to offer."

READ MORE: New Hampshire primary results are in: Trump clinches victory

Hayes' full op-ed is available here.