The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Dominates GOP Primaries, Again!

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

There were no surprises this Super Tuesday as both President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump won big in the day's primary voting contests. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley won a second primary in Vermont Tuesday night — but is it enough to disrupt Trump's path to the nomination? This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, political correspondent Susan Davis, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Our producers are Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, I'm Elizabeth. Hi, I'm Aiden. And we're students at the University of Southern California. And we just became best friends over our love for NPR. This podcast was recorded at 10.48 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5th, Super Tuesday. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we'll still be busy studying for midterms. Okay, enjoy the show. That was sweet. Well, hey there, it's the. That was sweet.

Well, hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And we are coming to you all at this late hour because it is indeed Super Tuesday, the biggest voting day in this primary season. Voters in 15 states and one territory have wrapped up voting. And yet, Domenico, despite its name, this Super Tuesday felt rather anticlimactic. We all basically knew what would happen was that Joe Biden and Donald Trump would come out very strong. That is indeed what happened. And so given that it felt, I think, rather anticlimactic, Domenico, what should we take away from what happened tonight?

Well, surprises can always happen in politics. And this was not one of those times. So we kind of knew going in that Donald Trump was likely to dominate tonight. We known that Joe Biden is going to be the nominee barring something extraordinary happening. But Donald Trump is really likely tonight now going to put some serious separation between himself and Nikki Haley. Essentially, the Nikki Haley project is all but over. And, you know, according to the Associated Press, who we follow for the race calls and delegate counts, Donald Trump could potentially clinch the nomination, the magic number, reach the magic number of 1,215 by as soon as next Tuesday.

So Trump cannot officially clinch the nomination tonight, but his lead, as Domenico says, is overwhelming. What does Nikki Haley do from this point? I think the question is, how does Nikki Haley exit the race? What is her message as she gets out? I think one of the big questions here is, where do Nikki Haley supporters go in November? And I think whether she would direct them in the direction of Donald Trump or whether she says she will vote for Donald Trump is a big question. I think there's also something interesting to me about Nikki Haley, not just as the person and the candidate, but what her campaign represented, which I think was the Republican Party of the past, the Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush era of conservatism on both economic and foreign policy. And I think we can all say definitively now that Donald Trump

has changed the Republican Party, not that it is changing, it's done. And even if you look to 2028, because even if Donald Trump wins, he would be a one term president. It is hard to imagine that this Republican Party with everything primary voters have been telling us in this nomination race are looking to go back to those days. So what does Nikki Haley do? It specifically is maybe less interesting to me to what are the Nikki Haley's of the Republican Party do if they truly feel alienated and isolated from the party that has now become defined by Donald Trump? And where her voters go, you're saying? Yeah, for sure. And look, Joe Biden has a lot of weaknesses going into November for an incumbent president.

But if you look at some of these votes tonight, you could look at it in some ways as Nikki Haley votes are protest votes against Donald Trump. It's certainly at least among Republican primary voters has an incumbent like status. And, you know, she's winning 15, but to win over reluctant Republicans who might like some of his ideas, but don't like him personally, or have been completely turned off by things like his ongoing lies about the 2020 election or the events of January 6th. But that work is not something Donald Trump is going to do. Donald Trump is Donald Trump. The message is exactly the same in listening to his victory speech tonight from Mar-a-Lago. It was all about immigration, how he defeated ISIS, trying to use some whataboutism and saying that it's actually

President Biden who's using political weaponization when we know that Donald Trump has already promised that he's going to go after political opponents if he's elected president for a second time. So he's going to be what he is. He didn't get above 47% in either of the two elections that he ran in previously. He's probably got that as about a ceiling. He's not really showing any indications. He's going to reach out to moderates. This is base, base, base, get people out, hope that inflation, the economy, and that dislike of Joe Biden wins over some of those blue collar, white working class voters in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, where we know this election is really going to be fought. I do want to go back to Nikki Haley, though, for a moment, because I have been rather confused in trying to understand what her end game is here, what her strategy is.

Because, you know, she said that she wants to stay in this contest so long as she's competitive. I would argue that it didn't even look like she was that competitive prior to today, but she is, you know, still here competing on Super Tuesday. Hey, she did win Vermont. It was an open primary, though. It was an open primary. It's Vermont, 17 delegates out of 874. That's not going to get you anywhere. She hasn't said, though, that she'll officially back Trump as the nominee. I mean, she also hasn't ruled out the idea that she could run as a third party ticket. I don't really understand what her path is. I mean, I think in this process, it has made it very clear that she's likely not to be the VP,

because Trump is a man who loves loyalty. I wouldn't rule that out. You wouldn't rule that out. I mean, you know, she has clearly has some leverage. She has these voters who are saying right now that they're not going to vote for Donald Trump. We don't know if that's actually going to be the case. I'm very skeptical that most of them, if not all of them, will wind up voting for Donald Trump in the fall. This is what happens in divisive primaries. That's why Super Tuesdays take place so early, so that parties can unify. But I wouldn't cross VP out totally. Look, this is somebody who in 2015, 2016 was backing Marco Rubio, who was not somebody who said she would ever vote for Donald Trump, went and worked for the guy. Right. In this election, she said on NPR that Joe Biden was the bigger threat.

So crazier things have happened in politics. But she has to map out her next steps very carefully if she wants to have a future in this Republican Party, which, as Sue points out, is Donald J. Trump's Republican Party, which, as Sue points out, is Donald J. Trump's Republican Party. She also ran in the primary in a way that I think left herself room to get back in Donald Trump's good graces. Explain that. She seemed to thread a needle in that she criticized him, but it was more of a generational argument, time to look to the future, stylistically were different. But she wasn't running in the Chris Christie lane of this man

is a grave threat to America and the nation. Like she didn't go as hard against Donald Trump to sort of eliminate herself from that conversation. So to me, you have to keep her on that list because she has conducted herself, as we read between the lines of what politicians say and do, in a way that I think has left, if Donald Trump wanted to open that door, she has at least left it open a crack. We are going to take a quick break for a moment. Stay with us. We'll be back. Senate primaries that took place tonight, one particularly high profile one out on the West Coast, California. And as we are taping this, the polls in California have not even officially closed. But where do things stand? Remind us of what is at stake there. So this is the seat of the late Senator Dianne Feinstein. So it's an open seat race. And California is one of those states that conducts something where it doesn't matter what party you

are, the top two vote getters in the race go on to November, which is essentially a runoff. The leading candidate here is Adam Schiff. He's a Democrat, obviously, but he is, you know, Schiff during the Trump era became basically a national figure. He was the lead prosecutor of Donald Trump in the first impeachment that made him a bit of a folk hero to Democrats. He entered this race with a gargantuan war chest. He's raised tens of millions of dollars because of that. So he came in the favored to beat. The question is who comes in second. And he is facing off against two of his fellow Congress women, Barbara Lee, a Democrat from the Bay Area, and Katie Border from Southern California.

If it's another Democrat, that's what Adam Schiff doesn't want, because then that sets up a race in which two Democrats got to beat the crap out of each other until November. And both of those women represent the more progressive wing of the party. And that's going to be an ugly slugfest that Democrats don't want to see happen, which is why Adam Schiff has done the thing that many smart politicians in both parties have done over the years, is he has been elevating the Republican in the race. I'm shocked. A man named Steve Garvey, who's a relative political newcomer, but is well-known because he was a former Major League Baseball player. Steve Garvey, well-known, could win because there are a significant number of Republicans in the state of California.

And what's his backstory, his politics? He's basically, I would say he comes from like Trump conservatism vein of politics, but he doesn't have a lengthy record. He's relatively new to the political scene. But he's well-known and Republicans like him because of his conservatism vein of politics, but he doesn't have a lengthy record. He's relatively new to the political scene, but he's well known and Republicans like him because of his conservatism. So, you know, in a Schiff-Garvey race, that's the race that Adam Schiff wants because he would be heavily favored to win. California is all but certain to elect a Democrat. If that is the matchup, Adam Schiff might be the next. It would be safe to say that Adam Schiff is likely the next senator from California. I also want to ask you both about North Carolina. Very key race for governor there

in that state. The incumbent Roy Cooper can't run for reelection. And I think both parties are eyeing North Carolina as a potential state that they could play in in the presidential race. I do want to ask you both about what happened there in the governor's race we saw tonight. So Republicans nominated a candidate that could be a problem for a general electorate. His name is Mark Robinson. He's the Republican lieutenant governor. He's very conservative for a state that is more purple than deep red than it used to be, certainly on the issues of things like gay rights and abortion rights. But he's also had a pretty well-documented history of saying rather sometimes racist or bigoted things, questioning the Holocaust, things that don't serve you well in a state like North Carolina, especially where so much of the vote is driven by population changes, driven by younger

people, women in the suburbs, people that are really turned off to this type of candidate. So I think part of why this is interesting is North Carolina, I think, is a state that doesn't get as much attention as it should considering how close it was in 2020. But there is also something that can be considered an up ballot effect, right? If Democrats are motivated to turn out because of something down the ballot, does that have a lift effect? And Mark Robinson, arguably along with Donald Trump, are the kind of candidates that even if a Democrat really doesn't like Joe Biden, they might be really motivated to show up in November to vote against. And who's the Democrat who would be on the other side? It's a guy by the name of Josh Stein. He's the state's attorney general. So they both enter the race with a pretty good level of sort of political infrastructure and name ID. I think it's really important to recognize that North Carolina also

as a state politically has been already sort of in the fire. You know, like we've been talking a lot these past couple of election cycles about Florida and everything that's happening with Governor Ron DeSantis there. Arizona has been in the spotlight for some of its immigration policies, Texas for some of its education policies and a whole slew of other things. North Carolina, remember, that's where the bathroom bill had originated. We've had lots of discussions about LGBTQ rights in the state. So I think there's a lot of people in the suburbs and on the left who are on guard against a kind of candidate who might be too extreme and have already kind of voted against them. That's what got Roy Cooper in the job in the first place. It also strikes me from my years of covering demographics that North Carolina is a state that demographers would always point to as having just massive changes.

You've got so many folks from the north who've moved into that research triangle area and also into Charlotte with the banking sector. And so it feels like there is a kind of a cross current going on. And it's a matter of who will ultimately win out. But it is a state that has been shifting demographically for some years. Obama won it in 2008, came close in 2012. Joe Biden came pretty close in 2020. It was only a couple of points that separated him and Donald Trump. So this is going to be one of those reach states that Democrats try to at least spend some money in.

Because otherwise you're talking about spending in just six states. That may be what it comes down to, but you have to at least put the other side on some form of defensive and make them spend somewhere else where it does take a significant amount of money to win in a place like that. And I would be remiss if we didn't note that Texas also had a Senate primary tonight. Ted Cruz is running for reelection. He obviously won his primary very handily. The race hasn't been called yet, but Colin Allred is a Democratic congressman who's running. I would say that this race is one that is like Democrats' big hope for 2024.

You know, Texas is the blue state of the future and always will be, maybe for Democrats. But, you know, the Senate is up for grabs in 2024. If anything, Republicans are heavily you know, the Senate is up for grabs in 2024. If anything, Republicans are heavily favored to win the Senate. And Texas is one of only two states where Democrats even have a chance of making a race competitive. So Colin Allred has got a lot of Democratic hopes riding on him. But Ted Cruz, obviously heavily favored to win in Texas, especially as the Republican nominee will be heavily favored to win there, too. That is a wrap for today's show. I'm Asma Khalid.

I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.