Donald Trump’s handlers handled him well Saturday night. By sending him out for his victory remarks minutes after South Carolina’s polls closed, they prevented him from emitting the sort of long, bilious snarl that was his response to hearing, immediately after he won in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley’s feisty vow to continue competing.
After basking in the adoration of South Carolina’s officialdom, arrayed behind him like third-graders singled out as teacher’s pets, Trump departed before he learned the fact that the high voter turnout had foretold: His win was less “gigantic” than he had promised. In November 2016, he carried South Carolina with 54.9 percent and in 2020 with 55.1. On Saturday, in a primary in which mostly Republicans participated, he received only 59.8 percent.
In the state that has the nation’s most rapidly growing population, the two places where the electorate most resembles the nation’s are Charleston and Columbia. There, Haley received 62 percent and 58 percent, respectively. It is likely that a significant number of Trumpkins value the prospective satisfaction of defeating Joe Biden more than the immediate fun of being tribal together. They might yet recognize that Trump vs. Biden would be a close call, whereas Haley vs. Biden would be a landslide for the former, with down-ballot consequences that might produce Republican control of Congress.
Brookings Institution scholars William A. Galston and Elaine Kamarck write at the Progressive Policy Institute that in the 17 elections from 1920 to 1984, 10 winners achieved a popular-vote victory margin of at least 10 points, and five achieved at least 20 points. In the nine elections from 1988 to 2020, no winner had even a 10-point victory margin. This year, Haley probably would achieve such a margin. And it is highly probable that Trump would lose the popular vote for a third time.
Furthermore, it is pertinent that in 2020 women outvoted men by 4 to 6 percent. According to the AP VoteCast survey, women favored Biden 55 percent to 44 percent; according to Edison data, 57 percent to 42 percent. Women provided Biden’s narrow margin of victory.
Like cold pizza washed down by flat beer, Trump, who once upon a time was edgy, is the epitome of staleness. Pity him: It is difficult to be transgressive when there are no remaining norms to transgress. Being an acolyte in the Trump cult used to be thrillingly naughty, a rude gesture against the Republican “establishment.” Now even the least alert Trumpkins must notice that he is the party’s establishment. Only one Republican member of Congress (South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman) publicly supports Haley. For most of the rest, who call to mind Theodore Roosevelt’s scrumptious description of spines carved from bananas, his whims are commands (regarding Ukraine, the border, the budget, etc.).
They might not understand the significance of the low ceiling above the hard floor of Trump’s support. Analyst Charlie Cook says Trump’s approval numbers while president moved within a narrow 15-point band: His highest Gallup rating was 49 percent, and his lowest was 34. Of Trump’s nine elected predecessors (excluding Gerald Ford), those with the smallest range between highs and lows were John Kennedy at 27 points; Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Barack Obama with 31-point spreads; Ronald Reagan with a 32-point range; Bill Clinton with 37. The widest spreads were Jimmy Carter (47), George H.W. Bush (60) and George W. Bush (65). Trump was comparatively frozen, and, unlike all those predecessors, constantly below 50 percent.
What Cook calls “the full-blown tribalism” that has made Republicans and Democrats “virtually monolithic” in their support of presidential nominees and presidents of their parties is of recent vintage. And is not forever, because nothing is.
Republicans (and others eligible to participate) in the 46 states not yet heard from might experience a mind-opening excitement if on Super Tuesday (March 5) Haley continues to provoke Trump’s annoying insistence that their opinions are nullities, given his inevitability. If so, his handlers will be hard put to contain his off-putting petulance that constantly threatens his tenuous hold on his composure.
The political air is thick with the theory that Trump’s nomination is something to be anticipated with certainty and accepted philosophically. He is, however, a blimp filled with two lighter-than-air gases — the charisma of wealth, and an aura of invincibility among Republicans. He has lied ludicrously about the former; Haley can continue to dissipate the latter.
On Aug. 11, 1951, the Brooklyn Dodgers led the New York Giants by 13.5 games with more than two-thirds of the season gone. But the Dodgers experienced the World Series sitting on their sofas.
