Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on Nikki Haley’s rise in the GOP polls

Geoff Bennett:

With only a few weeks until the first votes of the 2024 presidential campaign, one Republican candidate is on the rise, while another's campaign seems to be fading.

Our Politics Monday team is here for a check-in on the race. That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Merry Christmas to you both.

So, let's talk about 2024. Nikki Haley is looking for an upset win that could derail Donald Trump's path to the nomination. New Hampshire could be her best and perhaps only chance. And look at this Saint Anselm College poll. She has 30 percent to Donald Trump's 44 percent. What that poll doesn't show is that support for her has doubled since their last poll, while Donald Trump is holding steady.

When you look at this poll, what do you see?

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

Well, what you see is this is, exactly as you pointed out, a state that is really ripe for an upset in the mold of somebody like Nikki Haley.

Remember that New Hampshire is a state that has the opportunity for independent voters or people who don't identify by party to participate, so more independent-leaning, more moderate. This is also a state that is just overall a little more Trump-skeptical than many of the other states, especially those that come early like in Iowa or even a South Carolina.

The challenge for Nikki Haley, though, is that once you get past New Hampshire, finding opportunities for that coalition of hers to expand is really, really difficult. The primaries — some primaries don't allow independence to vote, places like California, for example, with a lot of delegates at stake.

And the kinds of moderate, college-educated voters who are attracted to Nikki Haley, those voters, again, most prevalent in New Hampshire. That thins out a lot once you get past that state.

Geoff Bennett:

And, Tam, based on your reporting, is that something that Nikki Haley can even do right now, expand her coalition beyond the college-educated, professional, mostly suburban voters?

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

That is a real challenge for her.

Certainly, if someone like Chris Christie were to drop out, those voters that currently support him would likely move to a Nikki Haley. But if someone like Ron DeSantis were to drop out, those are voters who are much more Trumpy. Those are voters who are looking for a message that is about isolation from the world, about building walls along the Southern border, a message that is much more like Trump's message and not as much like Nikki Haley's message.

Those voters certainly are more likely to go towards Trump. So, the challenge for her really is expanding her coalition. And it's just not — given the divisions in the Republican Party, the Republican Party is more Trumpy than it is, like, this traditional, more moderate, fiscally conservative Republican in a traditional mold that Nikki Haley represents.

Geoff Bennett:

Tam mentioned Ron DeSantis.

And The New York Times is out with this deeply reported piece looking at his failure to launch, despite all of the early hype. And it includes details like this one.

"Ryan Tyson, Mr. DeSantis' longtime pollster and one of his closest advisers, has privately said to multiple people that they are now at the point in the campaign where they need to — quote — 'make the patient comfortable,' a phrase evoking hospice care."

Is there any coming back from this for Ron DeSantis?

Amy Walter:

Listen, his only hope right now is that what we're seeing in the polls is not actually correct, especially Iowa. And, look, there is the possibility that Nikki Haley comes in second in Iowa and not Ron DeSantis. That is not out of the realm of possibility, especially right now, given her rise.

And, in fact, when you talked about broadening her coalition, how she does in Iowa and where she does better or worse is going to tell us about how likely it is that she can put a coalition together that's a little more regionally creative, let's say, and can break her out of this New Hampshire mold.

But for DeSantis, the challenge has been that he too is having a ceiling problem. He is unable to find this mix of voters who both want somebody like Donald Trump, but also want to move beyond Donald Trump. And he's never been able to really capture that. The other thing that this campaign did early on was decide that they were going to basically outsource all of the things that a campaign traditionally does, door-knocking, interacting with voters.

All of that went through a super PAC, not through the campaign. Why does that matter? Because you never really got the sense that there was a grassroots movement for Ron DeSantis. These were paid canvassers. These were people that they found from — not because these people said, I love Ron DeSantis, necessarily, but because the super PAC was paying them to do that.

So I think that piece really got to the heart of the sell of Ron DeSantis being a big part of the challenge.

Geoff Bennett:

And, Tam, drawing on your Biden world sources, how are they responding to this Colorado Supreme Court ruling that disqualifies Donald Trump from being president again on the grounds that he was involved in the insurrection, also removing him from that state's primary ballot?

How is the Biden White House, the Biden campaign, really the Biden campaign, how are they thinking about addressing this moving forward?

Tamara Keith:

You know, you're getting radio silence from them on pretty much anything that involves Donald Trump's challenges, his legal challenges, whether that be the various indictments and court cases or these challenges to even appearing on the ballot.

The Biden campaign feels that those sorts of stories are getting a huge amount of attention. In fact, they worry that those stories are getting all of the attention and sort of sucking the oxygen out of the campaign, not allowing opponents of Trump in the primary to really gain footing and also not allowing voters to learn about the things that Trump is saying out on the trail or the things that he's promising that he would do as president.

So what the Biden campaign is doing is trying their very best to draw attention, to draw contrasts to things like the former president's position the Affordable Care Act, or language he's used describing his political opponents as vermin, or the fact that he wants to seek retribution.

All of this, that's what they're trying to draw attention to, and they're sort of letting the natural order and the news cycle put attention Trump's legal challenges, whether that be the Colorado case or others.

Geoff Bennett:

Well, in the time that remains on this last Politics Monday of 2023…

Amy Walter:

Yes.

Geoff Bennett:

… I'd like to ask you both for a story or a theme from this past year that affected our politics in a new or significant way, Amy, starting with you.

Amy Walter:

Well, we're talking a little bit about the courts here, the Supreme Court's role in the presidency and what that election could look like, but it's not just the presidency.

It's also control of Congress may come down to what the courts decided, the Supreme Court being one, also some of the state courts on redistricting. And when you have a five-seat majority, as Republicans have, any single movement, one seat here, a couple seats there, could be the difference between Republicans staying in power or Democrats gaining power.

Geoff Bennett:

Tam?

Tamara Keith:

Well, and what Amy says sort of dovetails to what I was thinking about, which was, this past week, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court made a decision throwing out the state's legislative district lines.

Now, that is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But what stands out to me from this moment is, there was a race for state Supreme Court, for a position on the court earlier this year. And abortion was a huge issue in that race, because there was this oldie-time abortion law on the books that could go before the state Supreme Court.

And so there was a race that was pretty much entirely focused on abortion, a little bit about redistricting, but mostly about abortion. And that election had consequences. The judicial — the judge who was backed by Democrats, who aligned in favor of abortion, rights ended up winning, winning handily in this state that's pretty closely divided.

And that could affect the balance of power in the state legislature and other things. What stands out to me here is that, again and again throughout this year, we have seen examples of abortion being on the ballot, whether that be literally or just in typically minor races that people wouldn't even pay attention to.

And pretty much every time, it has fallen towards voters wanting to continue to have access to that health care procedure.

Geoff Bennett:

Tamara Keith and Amy Walter, thank you so much for joining us on this last Politics Monday of 2023. We will see you back here next Monday for the first Politics Monday of 2024.

Take care. Merry Christmas.

Amy Walter:

Merry Christmas.

Tamara Keith:

Merry Christmas.