The unofficial start of the general election for President Joe Biden’s campaign could commence late Tuesday evening – but that all hinges on what kind of a night Nikki Haley has.
Following Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ suspension of his presidential campaign over the weekend, Haley now stands as the last remaining Republican attempting to dethrone Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential campaign. The Biden campaign is keenly aware that a strong showing for the former South Carolina governor Tuesday night could delay the informal start of the Biden-Trump match-up, which plenty of Biden campaign officials and allies are eager to kick off sooner rather than later.
The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee have been closely tracking the former South Carolina governor’s performance in the GOP race, following her ups and downs since she jumped into the contest almost a year ago to challenge her former boss.
As the Republican field began to narrow – and, in particular, as DeSantis’ political star seemed to fall in recent months – some Democrats close to the Biden campaign increasingly speculated that Haley appeared to be the sole candidate with anything resembling a realistic shot at defeating Trump.
Now, with only the former president and Haley competing in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, some Democrats are hoping Trump sews up the GOP presidential nomination sooner rather than later so the Biden campaign can fully turn its attention to the former president. Some polls have shown Haley with a more formidable edge against Biden in a general election that other Republican contenders, including Trump. Haley has sought to use that argument on the trail, claiming she’s best positioned to defeat the incumbent Democrat in November’s election.
“The sooner they can make it about Trump, and Nikki Haley falls away, that’s going to be a successful moment for the campaign,” said a senior Democrat in close touch with the campaign.
That desire to eliminate any ambiguity about who Biden’s general election rival is, is in no small part about trying to jolt voters whom the campaign says are still not paying close attention to the campaign. As CNN first reported earlier this month, the Biden campaign’s internal research shows that most of the undecided voters that the campaign is targeting – nearly three-in-four of them – do not appear to believe that Trump is likely to be the Republican presidential nominee. That biggest reason, they say: Voters are still not tuned in.
That would shift once the narrative becomes abundantly clear Trump is, in fact, the man for Biden to beat – even if that transition doesn’t happen overnight.
Officially, the Biden campaign says they remain ready to run against any GOP candidate – and that includes Haley, whose surrogates insist that New Hampshire is not a “must-win” state for her. Unlike running against Trump, campaign officials say, a Biden-Haley face-off would require the Biden reelection operation to freshly define the former United Nations ambassador.
At the top of their ammunition against Haley: Her staunchly anti-abortion views, and a bill she signed as governor that made it illegal for a woman in the state to obtain an abortion after their pregnancy reaches 20 weeks, without exceptions for rape and incest.
She has also sought to lump Biden and Trump together, telling CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that they were “equally bad.”
“If either one of them was good, I wouldn’t be running,” she said. “I don’t think we need to have two 80-year-olds sitting in the White House when we basically got to make sure that we can handle the war situation that we’re in. We need to know they’re at the top of their game.”
The Biden team is also closely watching how Haley’s performance plays in fundraising circles after these early contests. One Democratic source close to the campaign argued some donors looking for a GOP alternative to Trump could swing from Haley to Biden if the campaign heads towards a 2020 rematch, especially those nervous about what a second Trump term could look like.
“Nikki Haley might have survived the longest in this primary but not because she’s some kind of moderate,” one campaign official said.
One recent Haley flub has drawn the attention of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The two Democrats pushed back after the former South Carolina governor didn’t mention slavery as a cause of the Civil War.
“Let me be clear for those who don’t seem to know: Slavery was the cause of the Civil War,” Biden said speaking at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, earlier this month. “There is no negotiation about that.”
For now, Biden is largely training his political fire on Trump, beginning with speeches at the start of the year casting his predecessor as a threat to democracy and, this week, accusing Trump of orchestrating the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Online, most of his campaign’s attention has been focused on the former president rather than Haley – or before he dropped out, DeSantis. Rapid response accounts for the campaign and the DNC post clips in near real-time from Trump’s rallies, seeking to portray him as either extreme or incoherent.
There have been far fewer posts about Haley. In fact, Biden himself sought to amplify Haley’s criticisms over the weekend of Trump’s verbal flub confusing her and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – one of the first times Biden’s own social media accounts have cast attention, however obliquely, on Trump’s mental fitness.
Toward the end of last year, Biden’s campaign had been criticized by some Democrats and allies of the president for not being forceful enough in going after Trump as it became increasingly clear he would be the GOP nominee.
Now, as Biden does ramp up his attacks, the challenge is in convincing voters to pay attention.