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“Everybody’s ready to jot down my obituary.”
That is by no means an excellent factor for a candidate to be saying on Election Day.
However Nikki Haley, the candidate, was attempting—pleading—to make a bigger level to CNN’s Dana Bash as they sat on raised chairs in the course of Chez Vachon, the landmark espresso store and makeshift TV studio on the west aspect of Manchester, New Hampshire.
“We had 14 candidates,” Haley mentioned, referring to the quantity of people that have been in search of the Republican nomination a couple of months in the past. “It’s now down to 2”—Haley and Donald Trump. “That’s not an obituary; that’s any person who’s a fighter.”
Honest sufficient. Haley was certainly nonetheless right here and exhibiting up, which is one thing to be pleased with. She is the final lady standing between the previous president and an unimpeded romp to the Republican nomination. This was Haley’s “closing argument” as she made her ultimate rounds in New Hampshire yesterday, greeting volunteers at polling locations, doing interviews, and hitting the tables at Chez Vachon. She would preserve preventing and proceed to flout the naysayers who’ve trailed her for her whole profession. Underestimate me is the message printed on one in every of Haley’s favourite T-shirts. That’ll be enjoyable.
Nearly instantly after the polls closed, a couple of hours later, networks declared Trump the New Hampshire winner. His margin of victory over Haley, nevertheless, appeared smaller than anticipated. “THIS RACE IS OVER,” Trump insisted in a textual content blasted out to his supporter listing simply after 8 p.m. Nope, Haley informed her Election Night time revelers in Harmony, vowing to persist because the marketing campaign moved to her residence state of South Carolina. “New Hampshire is first within the nation. It’s not final within the nation,” she mentioned in her speech. “This race is way from over.”
I spent a lot of December and early January watching Haley marketing campaign for the job she fairly clearly has been aspiring to for years. She proved to be disciplined and polished, ok to outlast the battalion of male challengers arrayed alongside her—“the fellas,” as she has recently taken to calling her rivals, lots of whom endorsed Trump as they fell away. She has claimed repeatedly to be a part of a “two-person race” in opposition to Trump, regardless of ending third in Iowa behind him and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
This felt like wishful considering at occasions, however it’s unquestionably true now and can current Haley with what’s been a recurring dilemma of her candidacy: How laborious will she be keen to marketing campaign in opposition to Trump? Will she be as noxious and ornery as the previous president certainly will probably be in opposition to her? Will she be keen to assault Trump and seize the ample vulnerabilities he supplies, even when it dangers his unrestrained ire?
Haley was hesitant to go after him when the sector was extra crowded. She supplied solely the mildest of critiques—that “chaos follows” Trump “rightly or wrongly” and that he was not “the appropriate president” for these occasions (as he was earlier than). Nevertheless it was hardly a certain factor that Haley would deploy her finest materials in opposition to Trump—about his odd habits and psychological capability and authorized issues.
The ultimate days of the New Hampshire marketing campaign supplied clues that she would possibly now be keen to take action. She talked about Trump’s age all through the day yesterday (inflating it by three years, to 80) and introduced up the perplexing sequence from Trump’s Friday-night rally, during which he appeared to recommend that Haley had been in command of safety on the Capitol on January 6 (he apparently had mistaken her for Nancy Pelosi).
Maybe extra notably, Haley conveyed that she was keen to attract out the race for so long as essential. “Joe Biden isn’t going to get any youthful or any higher,” she mentioned in her speech in Harmony. “We’ll have on a regular basis we have to beat Joe Biden.” This carried a sly message directed at Trump: He wasn’t getting any youthful or higher, both. And the longer the race continued, the extra his court docket circumstances would advance, new info could be revealed, and his habits may spiral. Haley identified that voters in 20 states could be casting ballots within the subsequent two months. There could be many extra contests to get pleasure from, or keep alive for.
If nothing else, Haley would dwell to see one other Election Day, in one other state.
Primary days can give off an oddly freewheeling and punch-drunk vibe. Candidates, staffers, and volunteers have all completed their work. Most of them are exhausted and infrequently battling colds, hangovers, or different illnesses. There isn’t any extra observe and preparation left to do.
“The hay is within the barn,” as previous political hacks prefer to say. Or, at the least one political hack mentioned this—to me—however I neglect who it was. I’ve additionally seen the maxim attributed to stir-crazy soccer coaches (earlier than the large recreation) and distance runners (earlier than a race). The fundamental thought is similar: There’s not a lot left to do, besides discover a strategy to go hours and burn nervous power.
All the pieces that is still tends to be improvisational and hardly strategic. Candidates rush round, attempting to get supporters out to vote and, in Haley’s case, to persuade them that the race isn’t over, regardless of all of the polls exhibiting Trump with an enormous lead.
“I don’t even wish to speak about numbers, and I don’t suppose y’all ought to both,” Haley admonished Bash at Chez Vachon.
She then talked about one quantity particularly: six.
That displays the sum of votes that Haley obtained in Dixville Notch, the tiny village within the northern tip of the state that’s recognized for tallying its votes simply after midnight on the morning of the first. “There have been greater than 10 journalists for each voter,” The New York Instances mentioned in its report on the wee-hours scene, which it known as “as a lot a press spectacle as it’s a critical train in democracy.” (The identical may very well be mentioned in regards to the New Hampshire major basically, an train that includes a comparatively tiny variety of voters whose views are comically amplified by media swarms.)
“All six got here to us,” Haley reported of the Dixville Notch vote. “Not half, not one—all six.”
Haley was joined at Chez Vachon by New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, her greatest supporter and frequent touring companion throughout the state in latest weeks. At one level, I requested Sununu, who was standing subsequent to the kitchen door—practically getting run over by waitresses carrying plates loaded with pancakes, bacon, and poutine drowned in brown gravy—whether or not he was anxious that this is likely to be the final New Hampshire major as we all know it. Some have predicted as a lot, provided that the Democrats are now not holding their first contest right here. Was he feeling wistful in any respect, nostalgic perhaps?
“Nah, we’re all the time on this. It by no means leaves us,” Sununu mentioned. He added that the Democrats had “realized their lesson”—that they by no means ought to have messed with New Hampshire and tried to remove its rightful spot on the entrance of the first parade.
Sununu has proven himself keen to query Trump’s age and psychological health extra instantly than Haley had been till the previous few days. “If he’s off the teleprompter, he can barely preserve a cogent thought,” Sununu mentioned of Trump in an interview with Fox Information yesterday. “This man is sort of 80 years previous.”
“He’s 77,” the Fox host corrected him.
“That’s practically 80,” Sununu maintained. “We’ll do math later.”
He has an apparent level about Trump, one which’s price making. However this can be a pet peeve of mine. Sununu and Haley usually say {that a} Donald Trump–Joe Biden rematch would function “two 80-year-olds.” Haley lately mentioned that if Trump have been convicted, and he or she have been elected, she would probably pardon the previous president. Why? As a result of it’s not within the nation’s curiosity to have “an 80-year-old man sitting in jail,” she mentioned.
It feels like a minor factor, but when Haley goes to assault Trump (accurately) for mendacity, if she’s going to attempt to declare some ethical excessive floor on this race, she herself shouldn’t be fudging the info. There’s no have to anyway; at 52, she’s clearly youthful than each him and Biden.
Since I figured the encounter at Chez Vachon is likely to be the final time that I’d be so near Haley—perhaps ever—I made a decision to be a kind of nuisance reporters and comply with her out of the restaurant.
“How previous is President Trump?” I requested her as she crossed Kelley Avenue. Haley ignored me.
“How previous is President Trump?” I attempted once more. She stored strolling. Another person shouted a query that I didn’t hear.
“There’s a whole lot of power, that’s what we’re seeing at the moment,” Haley mentioned in a rote tone, disappearing right into a city automotive and motoring off to her subsequent cease, after which extra stops after that.
