Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the 2024 campaign with first primary votes just weeks away

Geoff Bennett:

While the presidential candidates have been making their case to early state voters for months now, 2024 is officially here, and the first votes are just weeks away.

Our Politics Monday team is here with a look at the busy year ahead. That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Well, happy new year.

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

Happy new year.

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

Happy new year.

Geoff Bennett:

It's great to see you both.

So, look, I'm told by a source familiar that, as early as tomorrow, Donald Trump's legal team could file challenges to the pair of rulings both in Maine and Colorado that knocked him off those state's primary ballots.

Tam, in the days that — in the days that have passed since then, how has his campaign sought to capitalize on those rulings?

Tamara Keith:

Here is another instance of something that happened that caused people who opposed Donald Trump to come to his defense.

These are the sorts of events that he thrives on and benefits from. And so you had anti-Trump Republicans being interviewed and saying, well, I don't think he should be running. I don't think he should win. But in this case, he shouldn't be pushed off the ballot.

And this is a situation where you even have liberals, people on the left, who feel that this could be dangerous territory, that this could create a situation where anyone could be removed from the ballot, anyone could say something is insurrection if — even without there being a conviction yet.

Interestingly, the Maine secretary of state was interviewed by my colleague Scott Detrow and she said that they welcomed the Supreme Court weighing in, in fact, because this is incredibly murky territory.

Geoff Bennett:

And the secretary of state has received death threats since that ruling.

Tamara Keith:

Yes.

Geoff Bennett:

Meantime, you have got Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis both saying that, if they are elected, they would pardon Donald Trump if he's convicted on any one of the 91 felony counts he faces.

Here's what Nikki Haley said late last week.

Nikki Haley (R), Presidential Candidate: If he is found guilty, a leader needs to think about what's in the best interests of the country. What's in the best interests of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail that continues to divide our country.

What's in the best interests of the country would be to pardon him so that we can move on as a country and no longer talk about him.

Geoff Bennett:

So this is the persistent question. How can either Haley or DeSantis distinguish themselves when they continue to court Donald Trump's base of supporters?

Amy Walter:

Well, and question many of the legal challenges against him.

Geoff Bennett:

Right.

Amy Walter:

I think it's important, though, to go back, even before this campaign started, to where a lot of this began, which was right after the 2020 election, where, after January 6, Republicans had an opportunity to impeach the president, obviously did not.

Going into 2022, the January 6 commission was supposed to be a bipartisan commission. The Senate, Republicans there said, we don't want to do that, to support that. On the House side, obviously, Speaker McCarthy pulled Republicans that he had picked to be on that committee.

So, really, from the very beginning — I guess this campaign basically started at the end of 2021 — Republicans in power have been basically saying to the voters, we think that this is OK. It's not OK to criticize him, and it's certainly not OK to see that some of these very critical issues, whether it is January 6, Mar-a-Lago, the documents there, are worthy of questioning whether he is, forget about even guilty, whether he should be a candidate, a serious candidate for office.

So, that's the position that those presidential candidates find themselves in all these months later. The ground was already tilled by the previous Republican leadership. And that's — I guess maybe mixing a metaphor, but that's what they're going to have to deal in that environment.

Geoff Bennett:

Yes.

And, then, Tam, meantime, Nikki Haley is ascendant in New Hampshire. She, of course, faced criticism from DeSantis and Christie after her comments about the cause of the Civil War. The two of them certainly see vulnerability. Is there time for her to sort of manage the momentum ahead of the primary in New Hampshire?

Tamara Keith:

The exciting thing is, is that the primary in New Hampshire is just three weeks away. We have the Iowa caucuses just two weeks away. Actual, real-life voting is going to happen. We aren't going to have to talk about polls. I mean, we probably still will.

But we're going to be able to talk about actual voting and real momentum and not just perceived momentum. And so this is a key crunch time, and it's actually almost, like, very normal in this very abnormal year to have a candidate who is ascendant suddenly have a controversy that everyone's talking about.

What isn't clear is what that controversy will mean with voters. She is someone who has been trying to get those suburban voters, those independent voters, the sort of non-Trump Republicans. And so does fumbling on this and having to answer it a few times and saying somebody was basically trying to ask her a trick question about something that should be pretty easy to answer, just talk about the Civil — just talk about slavery.

Does that hurt her with the very voters that she needs as part of her coalition? Is Chris Christie able to make the case that he's trying to make? Or is the governor of New Hampshire able to make the case that he's able to — trying to make, which is, don't look at that, and, Chris Christie, you should go away, which is the argument that's being made over the weekend.

Geoff Bennett:

Yes. Yes.

Amy Walter:

Right.

Geoff Bennett:

Well, meantime, looking ahead to the general, we were talking before the broadcast about how both of you increasingly encounter people in your reporting and in your research who have the sense of disbelief that this will be a Biden-Trump matchup.

Amy Walter:

That's right.

We have these discussions every week about, well, how is this issue going to impact voters? What do you think voters — how are they going to react to this? And so many voters — This isn't just folks who are not maybe paying close attention — this includes people who are paying close attention to the election — are still in disbelief that the two candidates will beat Donald Trump and Joe Biden, that, at some point, something's going to happen and we will have two different — so — two different nominees.

And so when we talk about all of this stuff, for so many voters, they really aren't pricing it in yet, because it is not something that they really at this point believe is going to be true. And I don't know when that's going to kick in. Will we have to wait until the actual conventions? Will it be earlier than that?

I don't know. But even at the conventions, I have had people come say to me, maybe one of the candidates will drop out at the convention.

Tamara Keith:

Yes.

And I have had people literally say, who are you going to be covering in 2024? Are — really, Joe Biden's running for president? Yes. Yes, he is running for reelection. I repeatedly have spoken to people who are in disbelief that he really is going to follow through with it.

Let me tell you, there is a campaign infrastructure in place. He is really running for president.

Geoff Bennett:

Right. We should be clear.

Amy Walter:

Yes, he is really running.

Geoff Bennett:

Yes.

Tamara Keith:

And Donald Trump is really running for president and building a ground game in Iowa and trying to finish this off early, so that, if trials were to start later in the spring, he could be distracted by those trials, because he'd already basically de facto be the nominee.

Geoff Bennett:

Well, here we are, the first day of 2024.

What is the biggest political story you're watching, outside of the election, looking forward?

Amy Walter:

Yes.

I'm really fascinated by the group of voters that Donald Trump did better with in 2020 than he did in 2016, Latino voters. We remember, in 2012, after Republicans lost those previous elections, 2008 and 2012, they did this autopsy, saying, this party's not going to survive if we don't do better reaching out and winning over Latino voters.

They then nominated Donald Trump, who talked about Muslim bans and building the wall. And yet, in 2020, he did quite well with Latino voters, much better than many Republican candidates have, and with African American voters. There are a lot of Republicans who believe that a coalition is being built right now. Donald Trump's at the head of it, but it may not always need Donald Trump to be there.

A more multiracial, populist coalition, sort of a working-class multiracial coalition that will be the new Republican Party. And we get 2024 to be our second test case.

Geoff Bennett:

Tam?

Tamara Keith:

I'm looking way, way, way down-ballot, things like mayor's races for county commissioners or even election administrators.

In the last couple of years, down-ballot races have gotten a lot of national attention. In some ways, many of those races have been nationalized. And what I'm watching to see is whether, in a year when there is a presidential race that gets all this attention, whether those races will continue to be nationalized, whether the mayor of Kenosha, Wisconsin, will get big money from outside of the state.

Geoff Bennett:

Tamara Keith and Amy Walter, thanks for being here.

Amy Walter:

Thank you.

Tamara Keith:

You're welcome.