What Will Haley Voters Do?

Although Donald Trump won a decisive victory in South Carolina, 40% of the Republican primary voters cast their ballot for Nikki Haley. Some of those voters may have been Democrats, since South Carolina holds open primaries. Still, many were surely Republicans. A huge question is what the Haley voters will do in November. This precinct-level map shows how well she did. The greener the precinct, the better she did; the redder the precinct, the better Trump did.

Haley did best in the cities, especially, Charleston, Columbia, Seneca, Greenville, and Spartanburg, as well as some smaller ones. These are places where the Republicans tend to be more affluent and better-educated than their fellow partisans in deep-red rural precincts. These are voters that Joe Biden will try to pick off in neighboring North Carolina and Georgia; South Carolina is a waste of time for him.

The New York Times interviewed 40 Haley voters to see what they will do in November. Patti Gramling (72) said: "Biden is too old. And I think Donald Trump is horrible." She is what pollsters are calling a "double hater," and many Haley voters fall into this category.

All of them are angry about the choice they are about to be presented with. About half of the people interviewed said they would hold their noses and vote for Trump, flaws and all. Most likely the actual percentage will be higher, since in the end, many voters "come home," even when they dislike their party's candidate. Even people who called Trump "arrogant" and "stupid" said they would be forced to vote for him because the alternative was too hard to swallow. One recent Marist poll put the percentage of Haley voters who would ultimately come home to Trump at 82%.

A number of others said they just wouldn't vote. Trump is completely unacceptable to them for many reasons, but Biden is too old. There were also people in the sample who are nominal Democrats but feel the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left for them. For them, Haley is a good choice. Some of them might come home as well, since the Democratic candidate will be Joe Biden, not Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO).

Reuters also interviewed 15 Haley voters. Of these, six said they would vote for a third-party candidate, four said they would vote for Biden. The rest weren't sure. A number of them were upset that Trump has abandoned many traditional Republican goals, like free markets, lower debt, and less government. When two of them were interviewed together, they argued about whether the MAGA crowd was "stupid" or merely "easily duped." None of them were happy with the upcoming choice. (V)

What Will Haley Do?

It was a bad weekend for Nikki Haley. On Saturday she got whomped by Donald Trump. On Sunday, the Koch brother's political network, Americans for Prosperity Action, announced that it was ending its support for her. It issued the message: "She has made it clear that she will continue to fight, and we wholeheartedly support her in this effort. But given the challenges in the primary states ahead we don't believe any outside group can make a material difference to widen her path to victory." This is not a good omen for Haley.

Political campaigns usually end when the money runs out. Now a major source of money is gone. This doesn't mean Haley will be forced to quit this week. Haley said that after her 40% vote share in South Carolina, she raised $1 million in small donations. This will be more than enough to pay for travel and at least some staff until Super Tuesday. Consequently, there is no real reason for her to drop out before March 6, when the results are in. If she doesn't win any states, at that point she will probably reluctantly throw in the towel. A big question is whether she will then endorse Trump and instantly cause all the people who supported her to see her as a coward and hate her for it.

Of course, without the Koch money, she won't be on the air much although she can still hold rallies. At this point, the value of TV commercials is probably limited anyway. Most Republicans know already whether they like Trump or not, and a few more commercials probably won't change many more minds.

Naturally, Trump had to gloat about the Koch network giving up on Haley. He posted a tweet on his boutique social network saying that "Charles Koch and his group got played for suckers right from the beginning."

Charles Koch hates Donald Trump and certainly won't support him in the general election. However, he doesn't like Joe Biden either. Instead, the Koch network will focus on winning Senate and House seats and stay out of the presidential election. In a way, this is bad news for the Democrats because the Koch money won't make any difference in the general election—each side will probably spend a billion dollars—but $20 million extra in a close Senate race could matter and even $5 million in a tight House race could swing it. (V)

Vice Presidential Candidates Exhibit Their Trumpiness at CPAC

Five Republicans who have visions of a bucket of some warm liquid showed up at the CPAC conference in Maryland on Friday. They are: Kari Lake, Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD), Vivek Ramaswamy, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH). They all seemed to understand that they were addressing an audience of one. They fell all over each other praising Dear Leader, but nevertheless threw enough red meat at the attendees that it's fortunate dozens of people did not die of a heart attack on the spot.

How's this from Stefanik, a once-moderate Republican from up near Canada somewhere: "The closer President Trump gets to victory, the dirtier the Democrats, their stenographers in the media and the corrupt prosecutors will get. They will stop at nothing, and I mean nothing, in their attempt to steal this next election." Probably music to Trump's ears, even though she knows that she is lying through her teeth.

Vance took a different tack: "Donald Trump is maybe the first politician in my lifetime who will be much poorer for having served his country. That is the best evidence that we should re-elect him in 2024—he has sacrificed for his country." Unlike Stefanik's remark, which is complete fiction, this one might be true. However, Trump will not be poorer because he made an intentional sacrifice for his country, but because he defamed E. Jean Carroll and defrauded banks.

Noem said: "There are two kinds of people in this country right now. There are people who love America, and there are those who hate America," another popular theme with Trump. Lake didn't give a speech, but was on a panel and said America had to stop sending money overseas, ignoring the fact that the money "sent" to Ukraine actually goes to U.S. defense contractors who hire Americans to build the weapons and ammo sent to Ukraine. Ramaswamy also said stuff, but with inflation having raised the price of pixels to 3¢ per billion pixels, we don't think he is worth quoting.

In addition to these wannabes, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), Tulsi Gabbard, and Ben Carson also spoke to the crowd, but we don't think any of these three are even vaguely plausible.

As usual, CPAC had a straw poll, but about the #2 slot instead of the #1 slot since the latter was a forgone conclusion. Here are the results:

     1. Kristi Noem and Vivek Ramaswamy (15% each)
     3. Tulsi Gabbard (9%)
     4. Elise Stefanik and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) (8% each)
     6. Rep. Byron Donalds (7%)
     7. Ben Carson, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) (5%) each

Nikki Haley, Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Robert Kennedy Jr. all got less than 5%. In short, the base doesn't really have a favorite. And even if it did, Trump wouldn't pay any attention at all to it. What he cares about is who flatters him the most.

The selection process is radically different than in 2016, when nobody was really auditioning aggressively like this time and Trump picked someone (Mike Pence) to help him with a specific demographic (evangelicals) he was afraid of losing. He also made the choice in 2016 just a few days before the national convention. With the nomination sewed up so early this time, he could make his choice much earlier. On the one hand, an early choice will allow the running mate to get out on the trail and start campaigning early. This is especially important if his choice is not widely known nationally, and that holds for virtually all of the plausible candidates. On the other hand, once Trump makes an announcement, all the suspense will be gone, and Trump loves suspense. (V)

Nancy Mace Also Wants to Be Trump's Running Mate

Running for vice president is a strange ritual, played by its own rules, the strangest of which is that you have to pretend you don't want the job. It is entirely possible that Donald Trump or his campaign manager wants a woman on the ticket. A woman wouldn't threaten Trump the way a high-profile man could, because Trump doesn't think much of women. It could also help win back some of those very desirable suburban women. Anyway, Elise Stefanik is actively auditioning for the job and so is Kristi Noem (see above). Now Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is giving it her best shot, although she missed CPAC. You know she wants it because she said things that get attention and then said: "Anybody that says I would do this for celebrity isn't paying attention or is just choosing to tell a lie." As we noted above, rule #1 is pretend you don't want the job.

So what has she been doing? Going around dissing former speaker Kevin McCarthy, someone Trump loathes. She said he is "a complete loser" and even better, he "didn't have the courage or the manhood to call me" to win her over before he was fired. Someone who insults McCarthy's manhood is catnip to Trump. She also cleverly endorsed him [Trump] over two other candidates from her own state, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Nikki Haley.

Mace is also going around saying other things that Trump loves, like complaining about the debt ceiling bill McCarthy negotiated to keep the government from shutting down. When asked about the chaos in the House now, she said it was just as bad with McCarthy. She likes to mention how little she likes Hunter Biden, always a crowd-pleaser with the MAGA crowd. She also loves to play the Horatio Alger card, noting that she dropped out of school at 17 after a classmate raped her and now she is a twice-divorced single mom with two teenage boys at home at 46 because she pulled herself up by her bootstraps and went to the Citadel.

Mace's district is R+7 so she can't be too strict on abortion. She says she would like to ban abortions sometime around 15-20 weeks, which jibes well with Trump's reported preference for 16 weeks. When asked if she would say yes if Trump invited her onto the ticket, she was slightly coy, saying: "Anybody would say yes." That is about as close as anyone can get to jumping up and down saying "Pick me, pick me," without breaking the rule of acting like you don't want the job.

But Mace did note that her stand on abortion might help win some women over. She might have a point. In 2022, a 10-year-old girl in Ohio was raped and got pregnant. She could not get an abortion in Ohio because it was illegal, so she had to travel out of state to get one. At the time, CNN's Dana Bash interviewed Noem and asked her over and over if that happened in South Dakota, would the state force the girl to have the baby, and Noem absolutely refused to even address the question, preferring to talk about what a monster the rapist was. If Trump really wants to campaign on a national 16-week ban, Noem might be a drag on the ticket. Stefanik is also hard-right on abortion and might be almost as bad. Mace might be more compatible with Trump's view on abortion, and her life story of high school dropout to member of Congress might be compelling. But with Trump, you never know. (V)

The Clock Is Ticking for Trump

Now that Donald Trump has put away South Carolina easily, he can get back to more prosaic things—like finding about $530 million in cash or bonds so he can appeal his losses in the New York State bank fraud case and the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. Court rules in civil cases are that in order to keep the judgment from being enforced while filing an appeal, the appellant has to put up the amount of the judgment in cash or as a third-party bond. Time is running out. In the Carroll case, Trump has just 2 weeks to come up with $83 million. In the bank fraud case, the judgment was finalized on Friday at $454 million, with interest accruing at the rate of $112,000 a day. Where will he find the money? It's complicated.

Trump is thought to have something like $400 million in cash due to the sale of his hotel in D.C. and the Ferry Point golf course in New York. That won't be enough, even if he uses all of it. And he can't use all of it because he needs some free cash for maintenance, repairs, etc. at his myriad properties. Given his track record of stiffing vendors, anyone doing work for him is going to demand full payment in advance. Furthermore, in the past, some of his loan contracts required that he keep $50 million cash in the bank at all times and maintain a net worth of $2.5 billion. It is not known if any of his current loans have conditions like that, but they are likely to. The Washington Post believes that Trump's biggest lender now is the online Axos Bank, since no regular bank will touch him anymore. He has loans totalling $250 million outstanding with Axos and the bank might not be interested in lending him more money after he was found liable for defrauding banks.

Trump might be bailed out if the merger of his media company and the Digital World Acquisition Company happens, but he may not be allowed to sell any of his 79 million shares for 6 months after the deal closes and he needs the money within 4 weeks. Also, selling a large chunk of stock could cause the stock price to collapse. He might be able to borrow from a bank using the stock as collateral, although the stock is thinly traded and the price could be volatile, making it a risky loan for the bank.

On top of all this, there is about to be a major leadership change at the Trump Organization, with Trump barred from running the company for 3 years and his kids for 2 years. What will a new CEO discover when he takes over and begins examining the books? That could affect Trump's net worth and potentially his loan conditions.

The usual situation in civil cases is to go to a surety company and have them place the bond in return for a fee. But any surety company has to consider the possibility that Trump could lose his appeals, refuse to pay his debts, and be in the White House when the poop hits the ventilator. Could they sue a sitting president? If so, could he drag the process out for years? How much collateral would a surety company demand in order to have a deal? And knowing Trump's propensity for suing all his business partners, it might demand terms that Trump found unacceptable. He is thought to be investigating the possibility of having multiple surety companies involved, to reduce the exposure each one has. But getting multiple companies to work together is also complicated. For example, would they get shares in some building(s) as collateral? How would that work? Each company might have a different idea of how to structure the deal to make sure it would get paid back if Trump defaulted. And remember, Trump has only 30 days to pull this off.

One possibility that Trump is no doubt investigating is whether his friends Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman could pony up, since $530 million is chump change for both of them. Needless to say, having the president being deeply in debt to foreign dictators is problematical, to say the least, but Trump may end up with no other choice. (V)

Democratic Groups Are Prepared to Attack Biden on His Possible Border Measures

Joe Biden is coming under pressure to do something about the border. The Republicans in Congress don't want to fix the problem because Donald Trump has ordered them not to so he can run on a platform of "only I can fix the border problem." But Biden doesn't want to let Trump be able to say: "You did nothing." Consequently, the President is considering various executive orders that could stem immigration somewhat. He is trying to turn the border from a losing issue for Democrats into a winning issue by showing that the Republicans in Congress are refusing to take action so he is doing it unilaterally.

Are Democrats cheering that he may have found a way to defuse the Republicans' strongest policy issue and make it work for them? Goodness, no. A group of 150 progressive organizations is already opposing his actions before he has even taken them. One of the actions he is considering, which is probably legal, is to require asylum seekers to check in at an official port of entry to make their case, and not try to sneak into the U.S. in the middle of the desert and then make their case to the border patrol agent if caught. Biden is also considering raising the standard for getting asylum from the asylum seeker having a "credible fear" to something tougher. After all, the current standard basically hinges on whether the asylum seeker was afraid. How can anyone know if the asylum seeker was afraid? Biden could change the standard to something other than the seeker's personal feelings to something like whether there was an active shooting war going on in the area the specific person came from. He is also considering changing the procedures so that people who fail to meet the asylum test can be deported quickly, without years of litigation.

The progressive groups don't want any of these things. They would like more judges at the border to handle asylum cases quickly and more resources for border towns dealing with the influx. They also want more legal representation for migrants to make their cases and an increase in the number of legal immigrants. In other words, they want more immigrants when Biden is trying to get fewer immigrants, to take the wind out of the Republicans' sails. These two points of view cannot be reconciled. Of course, the progressive groups may just be bluffing and trying to lobby Biden into doing as little as possible, but when he does take action, they may just go off and mope but not actively oppose him in November. (V)

California Senate Race Is Tightening

A new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California shows that the all-party primary for the Senate is tightening up a little. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is still ahead with 24% of likely voters in the March 5 primary, but that is less than previous polls. Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) is second at 19% and Republican Steve Garvey is third at 18%. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) is a distant fourth at 10%.

So it still looks like Porter and Garvey are duking it out for the second slot on the November ballot. Porter is quite unhappy about Schiff running ads telling Republicans that they shouldn't vote for Garvey because he is too conservative and voted twice for Donald Trump, something designed to get Republicans to show up and vote for the former baseball player. Schiff has tons of money and the ads are effective. They have gotten Garvey into a virtual tie with Porter, despite the fact that he has raised very little money and not run many ads. But there is nothing Porter can do about all of Schiff's ads. She has some money and is running her own ads attacking Schiff, but in reality, Garvey is the guy she needs to beat, not Schiff.

Another problem Porter has is that crypto billionaires have sunk $5 million in ads trying to defeat her because they are afraid she would crack down on crypto.

Schiff's support is primarily from the Bay Area and L.A., while Porter's is from Orange County and San Diego. Young Democrats are for Porter while older ones are for Schiff. (V)

Sherrod Brown Gets Some Good News

It's that old "candidate quality" thingy again. Just when you thought the problem was licked, it pops up again. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is probably the most threatened Democratic Senate incumbent, even more than Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT). Montana has always been a populist state and third-generation Montana farmer Tester is a good fit for the state against a wealthy businessman from Minnesota, Tim Sheehy. Ohio is a working-class state in the Rust Belt and non-college blue-collar workers have become Republicans of late. These are the people who used to vote for Brown and now they are Republicans.

The Republican primary will be crucial to Brown's fate. The three candidates are Frank LaRose, Matt Dolan, and Bernie Moreno. LaRose is an Army Green Beret veteran, two-term state senator, and two-term Ohio secretary of state. He vigorously opposes abortion and campaigned against abortion for last year's ballot measures. He lost, but conservatives know he tried. Matt Dolan is a wealthy state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians. He can put unlimited money into his campaign and has dumped in $7 million so far. Bernie Moreno is a wealthy car dealer. He and allied super PACs have spent $8.2 million for him so far. LaRose is not rich and can't match that, although billionaire Dick Uihlein did toss $3.7 million in his direction last year. But that money is gone and LaRose is no longer on the air, whereas Moreno and Dolan are.

An important development in the race is Donald Trump's endorsement of Moreno. It is quite interesting in that it shows that sometimes Trump does exhibit loyalty, or at least he keeps his word. Moreno ran against now-senator J.D. Vance in 2022 and spent almost $4 million of his own money in the primary. But when Trump asked him to withdraw to clear the path for Vance, Moreno did so. Maybe Trump feels some loyalty for Moreno as a result of that or maybe there was a secret deal in which Trump promised to support him in 2024 in return for withdrawing in 2022.

A new Emerson College poll has Moreno at 22%, LaRose at 21%, and Dolan at 15%. With Moreno loaded and endorsed by Trump, LaRose out of money, and Dolan slipping, it looks like Moreno has the edge here. He also has been endorsed by Vance and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). With Trump, Vance, and Jordan on Team Bernie, what's a Republican not to like?

Or a Democrat? Moreno got rich selling Mercedes-Benz cars and dabbling in crypto. His daughter is married to super Trumpy Rep. Max Miller (R-OH). Moreno was also sued over a dozen times for his business practices. A man of the people? Not exactly, especially when compared to Brown, who is strongly pro-union and pro-labor generally. Moreno could be best described as a target-rich environment who is a poor fit for Ohio. Vance is also wealthy, but he got wealthy by writing a best-selling book about his background as a poor hillbilly. It will be a tough race for Brown in red Ohio, but having Moreno as his opponent is his best chance. It is perhaps worth noting that although Moreno is very rich, Brown beat another shady, wealthy car dealer, Jim Renacci, in 2018 by 6 points and Democratic turnout tends to be higher in presidential years than in midterm years. The primary is March 19. (V)

Is Facebook Like Verizon or Like CNN?

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two potentially momentous cases today. The cases arose from Donald Trump posting a tweet calling on his supporters to come to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, saying, "will be wild." In this case, "wild," meant the Capitol being trashed, 140 law enforcement officers being injured (four of whom later took their own lives) and four protesters dying. This led Twitter to terminate Trump's account.

Texas and Florida responded to his removal by passing laws making it illegal for social media companies to ban people, no matter what they posted. A coalition of social media companies sued the states and the case reaches the Supreme Court today. The case deals with what the First Amendment means nowadays. Remember, it says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. The courts have ruled that this clause applies to state legislatures as well as to Congress. The social media companies are claiming that the Florida and Texas laws abridge their freedom of speech (i.e., what they can and cannot publish) and are thus a priori unconstitutional. The coalition won its case in Florida but lost in Texas, so now the Supreme Court has to sort it out.

Fundamentally, the issue is what social media companies are. If they are private publishers, like CNN, The New York Times, or a million blogs, the publisher may decide what content to include or exclude. No one has a First Amendment right to be interviewed on air by Anderson Cooper or have his or her "letter to the editor" published in the Times. Publishers can determine what content they do and do not want to publish and there is no appeal from that to the courts.

If, on the other hand, Twitter and Facebook are common carriers like all the phone companies and the USPS, they have no right to censor anyone based on content. If a Ku Klux Klan or Nazi group has a phone line from a phone company and pays its bills on time, the phone company can't terminate the phone line because it doesn't like the content being sent over it. Similarly USPS, Fedex, and other delivery companies can't refuse to deliver mail or packages to them or refuse to pick up packages at their addresses if pickup is a service they offer. In other words, publishers may discriminate against individuals and companies based on content but common carriers may not. So are Ex-Twitter and Facebook publishers or common carriers?

Sometimes classification calls like this are tricky. One of us, (V), was once involved in a case in Europe about whether routers, the devices connected by fiber-optic cables that form the backbone of the Internet, are telecommunications devices or computers. In the former case, they would be subject to import tariffs and require government approval; in the latter case they would not be subject to tariffs and would not be subject to government approval. Billions were at stake based on the product classification. In the Supreme Court case today, no money is at stake, but free speech might be.

Florida and Texas are arguing that social media platforms are common carriers, like phone companies and delivery companies, and thus may not reject any "customer" based on content. They are saying there are laws requiring phone companies to hook up anyone who is willing to pay their standard prices and that they may not refuse to service anyone based on what they may say on the phone. The social media companies are arguing that they are publishers, like television stations and newspapers, and they alone may decide what to publish. They say no one has a legal right to being heard on their platforms (except they can't discriminate against protected classes as a group, like banning Black people).

In the Citizens United case, the libertarians on the Supreme Court voted to allow powerful corporations to do whatever they wanted to in order influence political decisions. It would be ironic in the extreme if they now voted to say that powerful social media corporations were not free to do whatever they wanted to because it could affect political outcomes, especially if they were trying to protect democracy by banning dangerous lies. (V)

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