Nashua, New Hampshire

Donald Trump has, like a boa constrictor, squeezed the life out of the Republican primary cycle, according to AP. Tonight, he swallowed New Hampshire and possibly Nikki Haley, too. 

As expected, Haley did well in some affluent Democrat-leaning districts — Concord, Lebanon and Dover — which reported early and inevitably prompted some excitement that she might dramatically exceed expectations. But she didn’t do well enough to overcome the wall of Trumpism elsewhere. 

Haley pitched herself to New Hampshirites as the woman who could bring stability after chaos of Trump and Biden could reign in America’s trillion-dollar debts. But Team Trump hammered her as weak on border security — Americans are more concerned about immigration than inflation, according to the latest polls — and warned poor voters that she would come after their social security benefits. She never really had a chance. 

Team Haley spent the morning telling the world she wasn’t giving up “while members of Congress, the press and many weak-kneed fellas who ran for president are giving up and giving in,” said her campaign manager Betsy Ankney in a memo this morning. Perhaps not the best phrasing, given that Haley must go on to South Carolina to keep fighting. 

“It’s good for our democracy to have a real, honest competition,” a Haley fan told The Spectator at a Bedford polling station earlier today. She added that she wanted her to stay in until Super Tuesday, “just to give people a choice.”

As we saw with Ron DeSantis last weekend, campaigns always insist they are never giving up until they do. Or, one Trump campaign official at his campaign’s election night watch party in Nashua put it: “She’s staying in, because she’s a psycho.”

Donald Trump, for his part, said today that he “couldn’t care less… if she drops out that’s fine.”

His campaign appear determined to wrap up the Republican race as soon as possible. At some level of his skyscraper ego, however, the Donald might quite want Haley to keep going, if only for the repeated pleasure of beating her over and over. As a publicity genius, too, Trump must also realize that he has sucked the life out of the primary contests.

On the other side of the political aisle, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did their first joint campaign rally of 2024 in Manassas, Virginia, where has was heckled by a man carrying a Palestinian flag: “How many kids have you killed?” Even without much competition, politics refuses to be boring.