All posts tagged: second place

A few theories on why Dean Phillips is still in the race

A few theories on why Dean Phillips is still in the race

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. At what point does a “long-shot candidacy” tip into a pure vanity spectacle? Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota refuses to suspend his Democratic-primary campaign against President Joe Biden. Does Phillips know something we don’t—or does he have a different 2024 plan in mind? First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic. Vanity Campaign or VP Campaign? Seemingly nobody wants a 2020 rematch, yet both Biden and former President Donald Trump continue to cruise toward their respective party nominations. Last night in Michigan, Trump defeated his Republican-primary challenger, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, by 42 points. In the Democratic contest, Biden won with more than 80 percent of the vote, while second place went to “uncommitted”—partially due to protests over Biden’s support for Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza. Marianne Williamson, who had previously suspended her campaign …

Iowa’s Cold Comfort for Ron DeSantis

Iowa’s Cold Comfort for Ron DeSantis

Published by skeptic

Even before the caucus began, Matt Wells was working the room. The 43-year-old wore an autographed Ron DeSantis trucker hat as he strolled up and down the aisles of the Washington High School auditorium in rural southeast Iowa, greeting neighbors and passing out DeSantis flyers. When it was time for three-minute speeches, Wells spoke from the podium without notes, his voice quivering with emotion. DeSantis “always backs up his words with action,” he told the crowd. “He will be a president we can be proud of.” Minutes later, Wells’s hopes were dashed. DeSantis lost to Donald Trump in Wells’s precinct by five votes. The former president went on to win the Iowa caucus by nearly 30 points statewide, carrying 98 of Iowa’s 99 counties and beating his own 2016 margin of support by more than 25 points. This wasn’t exactly a surprise. Trump had held a similar lead in opinion polls beforehand, and the only question was whether that margin would hold up if the snowdrifts and sub-zero temperatures kept caucus-goers frozen in their homes. …

The GOP’s Big Chill in Iowa

The GOP’s Big Chill in Iowa

Published by skeptic

The arctic chill that upended the final weekend of the Iowa Republican caucus provided a fitting end to a contest that has seemed frozen in place for months. This caucus has felt unusually lifeless, not only because former President Donald Trump has maintained an imposing and seemingly unshakable lead in the polls. That advantage was confirmed late Saturday night when the Des Moines Register, NBC, and Mediacom Iowa released their highly anticipated final pre-caucus poll showing Trump at 48 percent and, in a distant battle for second place, Nikki Haley at 20 percent and Ron DeSantis at 16 percent. The caucus has also lacked energy because Trump’s shrinking field of rivals has never appeared to have the heart for making an all-out case against him. “I think there was actually a decent electorate that had supported Trump in the past but were interested in looking for somebody else,” Douglas Gross, a longtime GOP activist who chaired Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign in Iowa, told me. But neither DeSantis nor Haley, he adds, has found a message …

The Next Phase of Nikki Haley

The Next Phase of Nikki Haley

Published by skeptic

Does Nikki Haley really have a shot at beating Donald Trump? Does any Republican? On Monday afternoon, a basketball gym in Bluffton, South Carolina, was packed with people who had come to hear Haley’s latest sales pitch. Hundreds more were waiting outside. No Republican candidate besides Trump can reliably draw more than a thousand attendees, but about 2,500 showed up for Haley. (Granted, this speech was in Haley’s home state, where she formerly served as governor. Also, the gym was a stone’s throw from the Sun City retirement community, a place where, gently speaking, people may have had nothing better to do at 2 p.m. on a Monday.) One of Haley’s volunteers told me this weekday event had originally been booked at a nearby restaurant, but that, given the current excitement of the campaign, organizers pivoted to the gym, on the University of South Carolina at Beaufort campus. Everyone in Haley’s orbit is understandably riveted. She’s squarely challenging Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for second place in the Republican presidential primary, no matter how second that …

Trump crosses a crucial line

Trump crosses a crucial line

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The former president, after years of espousing authoritarian beliefs, has fully embraced the language of fascism. But Americans—even those who have supported him—can still refuse to follow him deeper into darkness. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: The Decisive Outrage Readers of the Daily know that I am something of a stubborn pedant about words and their meanings. When I was a college professor teaching political science and international relations, I tried to make my students think very hard about using words such as war and terrorism, which we often apply for their emotional impact without much thought—the “war” on poverty, the “war” on drugs, and, in a perfecta after 9/11, the “war on terrorism.” And so, I dug in my heels when Donald Trump’s critics described him and his followers as fascists. Authoritarians? Yes, some. …

Trump’s Rivals Pass Up Their Chance at the GOP Debate

Trump’s Rivals Pass Up Their Chance at the GOP Debate

Published by skeptic

“We’ve become a party of losers,” the conservative businessman Vivek Ramaswamy declared during the opening minutes of tonight’s Republican primary debate in Florida. He bemoaned the GOP’s lackluster performance in Tuesday’s elections, and then he identified the Republican he held personally responsible for the party’s defeats. Was this the moment, a viewer might have wondered, that a top GOP presidential contender would finally take on Donald Trump, the absent frontrunner who hasn’t deigned to join his rivals on the debate stage? Of course not. Ramaswamy proceeded to blame not the GOP’s undisputed leader for the past seven years but Ronna McDaniel, the party functionary unknown to most Americans who chairs the Republican National Committee. After calling on McDaniel to resign, Ramaswamy then attacked one of the debate moderators, Kristen Welker of NBC News, before turning his ire on two of his onstage competitors, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. The moment was a fitting encapsulation of a debate that, like the first two Republican primary match-ups, all but ignored the candidate who wasn’t there. Five Republicans …

Nikki Haley’s Big Test – The Atlantic

Nikki Haley’s Big Test – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The race for second place in the Republican primaries has gotten closer. Nikki Haley has been rising surprisingly quickly in the polls in recent months, becoming a top rival to Ron DeSantis; both are still trailing Donald Trump. I called my colleague Elaine Godfrey, who covers politics for The Atlantic and attended a campaign event for Haley in New Hampshire last week, to talk about what Haley offers that DeSantis does not, and what her surge tells us about voters’ hunger for normalcy. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: New Scrutiny Lora Kelley: Why has support for Haley been rising lately? Elaine Godfrey: Her support has been ticking upward since August, when we had the first GOP debate. Supporters in New Hampshire told me that they saw her on the debate stage and really liked her. …

The Second GOP Debate Was Messy, Chaotic, and Sloppy

The Second GOP Debate Was Messy, Chaotic, and Sloppy

Published by skeptic

Suddenly, it just tumbled out: “Honestly, every time I hear you I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.” That was former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s rebuke of businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, easily the best line of Wednesday night’s messy and awkward GOP primary debate. Ramaswamy, for his part, produced his own meme-worthy quote during a heated exchange with Senator Tim Scott: “Thank you for speaking while I’m interrupting.” Such was the onstage energy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum: Chaotic, sloppy, largely substance-free. Seven candidates desperately fought for fresh relevance; none of them came away with it. Rather than pitching themselves as the candidate who can beat former President Donald Trump, these Republicans seemed to be operating most of the time in an alternate universe, in which Trump was absent not just from the stage, but from the race. Eight years ago, so many candidates were vying for the Republican nomination that the party took to splitting primary debates into two sessions: the main event and the undercard. The latter …

The Republican Presidential Debate Is a Pageant of Also-Rans

The Republican Presidential Debate Is a Pageant of Also-Rans

Published by skeptic

What are we all doing here? The Republicans’ first primary debate dangles on the calendar like one of those leftover paper snowflakes slapped up on the mini-fridge. It feels like a half-hearted vestige—it’s late summer, five months before the first votes are cast; precedent calls for a lineup of haircuts on a stage. And for the most part, the qualifiers will oblige, except for the main haircut—former President Donald Trump, barring some last-minute fit of FOMO that lands him in Milwaukee en route to his surrender to authorities in Georgia. So why should the rest of us bother? Would anyone watch a Mike Tyson fight if Iron Mike wasn’t actually fighting? Or The Sopranos, if Tony skipped the show for a therapy session (with Tucker Carlson)? Poor Milwaukee, by the way, which already suffered desertion three summers ago when it was selected to host the Democratic National Convention only to have COVID keep everyone home. Joe Biden blew off his own convention and didn’t bother to send an emissary (no Jill, Kamala, or even Doug). …