Following up on my Iowa take-aways last week, here are my take-aways from yesterday’s results in New Hampshire:
-On the Democrat side, the voters showed that by a wide margin they favor the 74-year-old socialist to the 68-year-old career criminal. While it’s nice to see Hillary Clinton get the rejection she so richly deserves, it’s hard to celebrate the alternative. The choices on the Democrat side this year are the most pathetic that I’ve seen in either major party in my lifetime.
-A tie in Iowa and huge victory in New Hampshire have established that Bernie Sanders must be taken seriously as a viable candidate, but does he have the juice to win in the South? Super Tuesday, coming soon….
-On the Republican side, even all of the polls that showed Donald Trump with a strong lead underestimated just how strong a lead he had. To continue a now worn-out term, his 19-point victory was “yuge.”
-But the scope of Trump’s victory was even bigger than just his 19-point margin over the 2nd-place finisher. He also benefits from the fact that the next 4 candidates all performed so similarly that none of them has an incentive to drop out. So, opposition to Trump will continue to be divided between multiple candidates, giving Trump the opportunity to win states with pluralities. In a two-man race, polls show Trump losing to all of the remaining candidates, so keeping the opposition spread out is a tremendous benefit to Trump.
-Aside from Trump exceeding the already high expectations set for him going into New Hampshire, the big news from yesterday’s results was John Kasich’s 2nd-place finish. 16% is not exactly a blow-out, but until now few people were treating Kasich as a first-tier contender. But Kasich campaigned hard in New Hampshire and had the kind of blue-collar down-to-Earth appeal that New Hampshire voters like, and Marco Rubio’s disastrous debate performance last weekend created just the opportunity Kasich needed to pull ahead. The question now is whether he has the organization and resources to capitalize on it heading into Super Tuesday.
-And speaking of Rubio, I can’t recall a candidate so badly stepping on his own momentum since Howard Dean’s famous scream. After his strong showing in Iowa, Rubio jumped to 2nd place in most NH polls, but debates matter, and NH voters notoriously make up their minds late. Rubio’s greatest weakness as a candidate is the question of whether his youth renders him unprepared for a brutal general election and for the challenges of the presidency. His repeated robotic answers to questions after Chris Christie attacked him for giving such robotic answers reinforced these concerns in voters minds, and Rubio ended up finishing 5th. In an e-mail to his supporters last night, Rubio had the character to attribute his defeat to his own poor debate performance, and he assured everyone that it will never happen again. He needs to keep that promise. To remain viable, Rubio needs a solid performance at the next debate.
-Jeb! Bush had a result only a hair better than Rubio’s, for a 4th place finish within a tight pack of not-Trump contenders. This was a respectable performance under the circumstances, but probably not enough to give him real momentum going forward. That said, he’s got the resources to stay in the race at least through Super Tuesday, and given the massive amounts of money invested in him by large numbers of Republican power players, he will probably be expected to do so.
-Chris Christie did what he does best – hurt a strong Republican presidential contender. He succeeded in taking Rubio down, but he made no case for why people abandoning Rubio should go to him. So, it appears at first glance that most of the folks who had been inclined toward Rubio after Iowa but disappointed after the debate ended up going to Kasich. Very few of them went to Christie because negative campaigning only benefits a candidate if he gives the voters an affirmative reason to support him. Christie didn’t do that. So now he goes home to NJ to lick his wounds (and probably eat them). Here’s hoping he stays there.
-Ted Cruz did pretty much what he was expected to do and needed to do, which was to have a respectable 2nd-tier showing. He ended up effectively tying for 3rd with Bush and Rubio, which, after winning Iowa, is sufficient to keep him going through Super Tuesday, which will be his real test.
-Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson did what they were always fated to do. They peeked in the year before the election, when people have the luxury of voting with their hearts rather than their heads. Both of them are worthy of our respect and affection, but neither of them were ever really viable candidates for the presidency of the United States, and their 4% and 2% showings in NH reflected that. It’s time for them to bow out gracefully.
-Jim Gilmore is a friend and a good man. The way he has been treated throughout this race by both the “news” media and the RNC has been disgraceful. He was a successful governor of Virginia and chairman of the RNC, and he is a universally respected expert on counter-terrorism. He deserves to be shown at least the same level of respect as Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Lindsey Grahamnesty. But life isn’t fair, and Jim’s candidacy never got off the ground. He told us that he expected to launch his campaign out of NH, but he received a total of 129 votes there – less than Huckabee and Santorum, who have both ended their candidacies. Jim would make a great president if given a fair chance, but that hasn’t happened, and it’s time to read the tea leaves and get out.
We now have an 11-day break until the next contests on February 20th in Nevada (Democrats only), South Carolina (Republicans only), and Washington. The SC Republican primary will be a launching pad or a buzzkill for the GOP candidates heading into the Super Tuesday contests on March 1st. So, on to Carolina!
UPDATED: Chris Christie has announced that he is dropping out of the race. Democrats everywhere are saddened by the news.
