Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, senior politics editor Scott Bland and campaign embed Katherine Koretski report on how Donald Trump is influencing the future of both parties. Plus, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki explains why even Nikki Haley’s best-case Super Tuesday scenario won’t get her much closer to the GOP nomination.
Trump has remade the GOP. He’s shaping the Democratic Party’s future, too.
By Scott Bland and Katherine Koretski
Joe Biden, 81, recently answered questions about his age by calling Donald Trump, 77, a politician of the past. “It’s about how old your ideas are,” Biden said on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
But in at least one key respect, Trump is very much the future. He is shaping the direction of not only the Republican Party, but the Democratic Party — and you can see it all over the ballot around the country on Super Tuesday.
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While Trump tries to wrap up the GOP presidential nominating fight, down-ballot primaries are kicking off in many states today. And the former president’s king-making power is on display in all sorts of Republican primaries, from the U.S. Senate down to state legislative races. It’s also eye-opening to realize how Trump’s influence is shaping the Democratic Party, which has organized itself in opposition to the former president in recent years.
Take a look at just a few of the states holding primaries today:
California: The leading Democrat in the Senate polls, Rep. Adam Schiff, rose to national prominence on the left as one of Trump’s impeachment investigators and antagonists in Congress.
“The way that he took on Trump fearlessly was — I think we need to do more of that as Democrats,” said Megan Penrose, one of several Schiff voters at a Sunday event in San Francisco who referred to his speeches during Trump’s first impeachment. The other main Democratic contender in the Senate race, Rep. Katie Porter, was elected in the 2018 backlash wave against Trump.
Texas: Trump has leapt into state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s revenge tour, helping his ally back primary challenges against state lawmakers who supported Paxton’s impeachment on corruption charges last year. That includes targeting the powerful Republican state House speaker.
Meanwhile, the leading Democratic candidate for Senate, Rep. Colin Allred, was another 2018 wave winner, flipping a seat that was never supposed to be competitive — until Trump upended the suburbs.
North Carolina: Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the GOP’s likely nominee for governor, reflects Trump’s style of politics, stirring support within his party with a string of controversial comments over the years. And Republican primaries in the state’s many open House districts feature a bevy of candidates trying to prove themselves as the most Trump-friendly of the pack.
And Super Tuesday is only the start of months of primaries for Senate, House, governor and local offices. With each successive contest, Trump’s role shaping American politics grows.
Follow along with NBC News’ Super Tuesday coverage tonight with our results page and live blog.
Haley’s best-case Super Tuesday scenario still wouldn’t be enough
Analysis by Steve Kornacki
There are nearly 900 delegates up for grabs in today’s Republican primaries and caucuses. But unless she somehow engineers massive upset victories in multiple states, Nikki Haley stands to collect only a pittance of them.
To illustrate what she’s up against, I put together a rough estimate of Haley’s best- and worst-case delegate scenarios tonight with my colleagues Ben Kamisar and Adam Noboa:
As you can see, the range from Haley’s best cases to her worst isn’t that big. This is a function of the rules, as many of the delegate contests today are effectively winner-take-all, and the demographics, as many of the states that are voting just don’t have a ton of the college-educated, higher-income suburbanites she’s been leaning heavily on.
Realistically, the best-case scenario for Haley would look something like this:
* A win in Vermont, a deep-blue state with an open primary, in which Trump received only 32% of the vote in 2016.
* A win in Virginia, where the northern D.C. suburbs and the Richmond metro area provide her with a bounty of potentially friendly suburbanites.
* Strong showings in Colorado, Minnesota and North Carolina, where delegates are likely to be awarded on a proportional basis.
* Maybe even in a win in Massachusetts, where the (small) core Republican electorate is pro-Trump, but where independents (60% of the state’s overall voter pool) can participate.
The problem for Haley is that even if she achieves all of this, it would only add up to just over 100 delegates. Meanwhile, Trump seems poised to sweep through Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas — states with very conservative electorates, no shortage of working-class and rural white voters, and rules that make them functionally winner-take-all (or close to all).
He’s also well positioned in the caucus states of Alaska and Utah, along with Maine, another essentially winner-take-all primary with a heavy concentration of rural, working-class voters.
These states could net Trump something approaching 500 delegates. And then add to that the motherlode: California, a closed primary (meaning there are no independents or Democrats for Haley to pull from) where a simple majority is enough to win all 169 delegates.
What it takes tonight for Haley to continue with her candidacy is up to her. Perhaps if she wins a couple of states, she’ll point to it as a mandate to proceed, even if she is swamped in the overall delegate count. But if she wants to emerge claiming she has even a remote path to the GOP nomination, it will require outright wins in multiple states that, on paper, appear quite hostile to her.
🗞️ Today’s top stories
- 🚫 Seriously, she’s not running: Democrats and Republicans alike have fixated on the notion of Michelle Obama swooping in to replace Biden on the ballot. That isn’t happening. But she does plan to hit the campaign trail for the president, even if it’s in a somewhat limited capacity. Read more →
- 👋 She’s also not running: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat-turned-independent, announced she would not run for re-election in Arizona, paving the way for a tough and expensive fight for her seat in the battleground state. Read more →
- 💰 Three presidents walk into a fundraiser : A fundraiser this month featuring Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton is expected to raise more than $10 million and draw at least 3,000 people. Read more →
- 🎙️ Watered-down speech : Administration officials toned down the original version of Vice President Kamala Harris’ remarks calling for an immediate six-week cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official familiar with the speech told NBC News. Read more →
- 👨💼👨💼 Down to two Johns: The race to replace Mitch McConnell as Senate Republican leader is now effectively between Sens. John Thune of South Dakota and John Cornyn of Texas after Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming opted to run for the No. 2 position instead. Read more →
- ☑️ Every vote counts: The Texas Tribune breaks down how a the fraction of voters who will turn out for today’s primaries have a massive say in who runs the state. Read more →
- 🎤 Fill in the Blank Space on your ballot: Taylor Swift urged her 282 million Instagram followers to vote on Super Tuesday, without endorsing any specific candidate or cause. Read more →
That’s all from The Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at [email protected]
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Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
