2024 Presidential Campaign Thread, Pt. 4

(The Guardianb) Regardless of the outcome of Saturday’s primary in her home state South Carolina, the Associated Press reports that Nikki Haley has a full schedule of campaign events planned.

The former South Carolina governor plans to stop in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Washington DC, Minnesota, Michigan, Virginia, Colorado and Utah after the primary. Her campaign has also bought $500,000 in advertisements to air in Michigan ahead of its primary on 27 February.

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Yet another poll indicates that Nikki Haley is far behind Donald Trump among Republican voters in her home state South Carolina.

A just-released Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey finds Trump with 58% support and Haley with 35% support, a gap of 23 points. Seven per cent of voters say they’re undecided.

(The Guardian) White House considers bypassing Congress to crackdown on migration at US-Mexico border – reports
Joe Biden and his White House team are considering using various aspects of federal immigration law – that were repeatedly utilized by Donald Trump during his hardline, anti-immigrant presidency – to unilaterally initiate a sweeping crackdown on migrants crossing into the US across the Mexico border uninvited, according to multiple reports.

The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that the US president could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks told the Associated Press last night.

But the public is warned that plans are not finalized and it’s unclear how the administration would draft any such executive actions in a way that would survive the inevitable legal challenges.

Biden has hardened his rhetoric and policy intentions over the course of his presidency so far and the issue of irregular migration at the southern border – chiefly migrants crossing the border between official ports of entry into the US, because they can’t get an appointment or gain permission to enter for an asylum interview, and turning themselves in to border patrol, hoping then to be able to file an asylum claim.

The notion of a crackdown on asylum seekers by Biden goes against international human rights laws and a tradition of being able to request shelter after reaching US soil and will enrage progressives and immigration advocates, probably provoking legal challenges and political uproar. But voters have consistently told pollsters they disapprove of the White House’s handling of border security.

(The Guardian) More progressive lawmakers are criticizing Biden’s potential use of presidential authority to limit asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border.

Abdullah H Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, said that Biden’s potential actions mimic Trump’s infamous “Muslim ban”.

From Hammoud via X:

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Conservatives in Congress have long clamored for tighter border restrictions to keep migrants from entering the United States from Mexico, with some going as far as to threaten to shut down the government over the issue.

Rightwing congressman Byron Donalds reiterated the threat today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, ahead of a 1 March deadline for lawmakers to agree on new government funding measures, or face a partial shutdown of federal operations:

(The Guardian) Haley campaign acknowledges 'uphill battle', argues Trump would be weaker against Biden
In a call with reporters, Nikki Haley’s campaign manager Betsy Ankney acknowledged the long odds the former South Carolina governor faces with Republicans, but argued Donald Trump would fair much worse against Joe Biden in the November presidential election.

“We know that this is an uphill battle. We know that the road is difficult. We know that the math is challenging, but this has never just been about who can win a Republican primary,” Ankney said. “This battle is about who can win in November, defeat the Democrats and finally get our country back on track. And, the reality is no matter what all-caps rants Trump goes on on Twitter about the polls. He will not defeat Joe Biden in November and he will drag the entire Republican ticket down with him.”

She cited a recent poll from Marquette Law School showing Haley would beat Biden by a larger margin than Trump, while also warning that, if Trump is the nominee, the GOP will struggle to win seats in Congress: There is a reason that Biden and the Democrats want to run against Trump. They know that they can beat him, yet again. If Trump is the nominee, the House is gone. If Trump is the nominee, the Senate map automatically shrinks from eight or nine seats to three, and keep in mind this is the best Senate map the Republicans have for the rest of the decade. If Trump is the nominee, the RNC will continue to be in shambles, they will continue to fund his legal bills and we will continue to lose. And if Trump is the nominee, we will continue to see the hate and division and chaos that has plagued the last seven years. So we know the odds here, but we also know the stakes, and we think that a whole lot of Republicans across the country do, too.

(The Guardian) Koch brothers-backed group stops spending for Nikki Haley
Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP), the conservative Super Pac backed by billionaire Charles Koch, announced it has paused its financial support of former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

AFP Action said it “wholeheartedly” supports Haley’s plan to keep campaigning but that its backing would only come in the form of words. The announcement on Sunday came a day after Haley lost her home state’s GOP primary to Donald Trump. The statement said: 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. And so while we will continue to endorse her, we will focus our resources where we can make the difference. And that’s the US Senate and House.

Haley’s campaign described the group as a “great organization and ally in the fight for freedom and conservative government” and insisted it has “plenty of fuel to keep going”.

(The Guardian) Top advisers to the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump have held discussions that included efforts to secure an endorsement of the former president by McConnell, according to reports.

The conversations, first reported by the New York Times, have been held between Trump’s campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, and longtime McConnell adviser, Josh Holmes. The NYT report writes: Donald J. Trump and Mitch McConnell haven’t said a word to each other since December 2020. But people close to both men are working behind the scenes to make bygones of the enmity between them and to pave the way for a critical endorsement of the former president by the one Republican congressional leader who has yet to offer one.

An endorsement from McConnell would be the culmination of a relationship that was frosty even before it collapsed over the January 6 Capitol attack. The longtime Senate GOP leader blamed Trump for being “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”

(The Guardian) Strong showing by Gaza protest vote adds to Biden's headaches in swing state Michigan
On the surface, things went about as expected in Michigan’s primary last night. Donald Trump was the overwhelming pick of the state’s Republicans, who gave him more than 68% support compared to his sole challenger Nikki Haley’s nearly 27%. Among Democrats, Joe Biden won 81% of the vote – no surprise for a sitting president. But more than 13% of the party’s voters opted not to vote for Biden and rather write in “uncommitted” as part of a campaign to protest his administration’s support for Israel and refusal to press for a ceasefire in its invasion of Gaza. In Dearborn, home to large communities of Arabs and Muslims, the write-ins beat the president by more than 50 percentage points.

The general election is eight months away, but the protest was nonetheless another worrying sign for Biden, whose re-election campaign has been rattled by polls showing him down against Trump in several swing states, including Michigan. The president now seems tasked with not just winning over a state that was crucial both to his victory in 2020 and Trump’s in 2016, but winning back a community whose support could prove pivotal to deciding the election.