Let's Back Up And Look At The Big Picture

Two events over the past few days may not seem very closely related, but I think that together, they represent the collapse of the White House 2024 game plan and begin to explain the increasing dissatisfaction from Denocrats with the state of Biden's campaign. The events are the release of Nathan Wade's phone tracking data and Nikki Haley's 20-point-plus loss to Donald Trump in her home state primary.

The central point of the White House reelection plan was recognizing that Joe Biden isn't a good candidate. He wasn't good in 2020, but they were able to use COVID to keep him off the campaign trail, and they were somehow able either to keep him sober or medicate him effectively before the debates, so that he beat the limited expectations for his debate performance, in that he didn't garble the names of world leaders or whatever, as he has routinely been doing more recently.

So the plan as of the middle of last year was to hobble Trump's campaign performance by putting him on trial, in particular by starting the January 6 federal trial in Washington by March 5, the day before the Super Tuesday primaries. Then, although no firm date had been set for the classified documents trial in Florida or the Fulton County RICO trial, both were expected to get under way by May, putting them at the end of the primary season and before the convention.

It was apparently expected, especially if the trials could provide explosive testimony from former Trumpers who'd copped guilty pleas, that these would heavily damage Trump's prospects in the primaries and help candidates like Nikki Haley, whom the Democrats apparently felt would be easier for Biden to beat in the general election.

Haley's own campaign strategy has in fact dovetailed with these expectations.

Nikki Haley’s recent comments suggest that she sees a sweet spot for her campaign as former President Donald Trump’s legal drama intensifies – and potentially results in a criminal conviction – in the coming months.

“Just wait, just wait. March, April, May, June,” the former South Carolina governor said on Wednesday when asked about Trump’s support typically strengthening when he shows up in court. “When you see this and he is completely distracted and the American people are worried about the $34 trillion in debt, they are worried that their kids can’t read. … They are worried about wars around the world and he is talking about how he is victim.”

While Haley predicts that support for Trump will drop off in the coming months as he spends more time in the courtroom, she has also made the case that voters will not support Trump if he is criminally convicted.

The problem is that Trump's legal drama isn't intensifying, it's degenerating into farce. One YouTube commentator compares the Willis-Wade revelations to the Jussie Smollett case, with its enduring images of hired bodybuilders wearing MAGA hats and phony nooses, but Willis-Wade will likely prove more archeypal and damaging to the lawfare campaign. The CNN link continues,

“Now he has three judgments against him. He’s going to be in court March and April, May and June. He has said himself he is going to spend more time in a courtroom than he is on the campaign trail. And so he’s been on a rant about what a victim he is,” Haley told supporters at a campaign event in her home state of South Carolina on Wednesday.

So if this was Haley's expectation only a few days ago, it's been overtaken by events. The Washington January 6 federal trial is on indefinite hold pending appeals to the US Supreme Court. The Fulton County case, if it survives dismissal following Judge McAfee's decision, probably can't now be tried this year, and those who'd pled guilty, possibly in anticipation of providing testimony for the prosecution, will likely withdraw their pleas. The Florida classified documents case, which might have begun in May, is likely to be delayed by Trump's latest motions, which will be appealed if the trial court denies them.

The only other pending case is the Alvin Bragg Stormy Daniels hush money case in New York, which the electorate is likely to treat as a joke, just as it treated the two earlier New York cases. It's understoiod, in fact, that those cases simply drove Trump upward in the polls. Any criminal conviction for Trump before the election is highly unlikely, and it's in fact less likely that any of the cases outside New York can come to trial before the election at all.

Most recently, Haley has been claiming that although she doesn't win majorities, she does get 40% of the primary vote. One problem with that claim is that many of those votes are from crossover Democrats hoping to boost her chances in the November election. A second issue that I think may emerge is related to the Kari Lake scandal last month in Arizona:

Arizona Republican Party Chairman Jeff DeWit resigned Wednesday following the release of an audio tape in which he allegedly tried to bribe GOP firebrand Kari Lake not to run for Senate, as the controversial Lake mounts another campaign for office in the state.

. . . “There are very powerful people who want to keep you out,” DeWit can be heard saying in the recording, reportedly taken at Lake’s home in March 2023, before asking Lake for a “number.”

DeWit explained in the tape that the “powerful people” wanted to make way for a new party standard bearer.

So are those same powerful people bankrolling Nikki Haley's continued Quixotic campaign to beat Trump? This may well be exposed in coming weeks; it's generally assumed that she's running with unstated Democrat support.

Plan A is rapidly being overtaken by events, and there's no Plan B. Whatever develops in coming months, the lawfare campaign isn't working, and that's going to thwart any plan to make anyone but Trump the nominee. Meanwhile, the likelihood that Biden won't be able to undertake a strenuous reelection campaign increases.