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VP Harris’ Haley Play

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This week, Greg Sargent has had two good podcasts on swing state politics, first with the campaign strategist for North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, Morgan Jackson, and then with Josh Shapiro. Both talked about the import of losing by less in rural areas — something Barack Obama did successfully, something that Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin says she’s attempting on Michigan.

But Jackson focused on something else: he noted that Nikki Haley received 250,000 votes in the March 5 primary, the day she dropped out. If Harris can convert any of those voters, it can chip into the 10,000 votes by which Joe Biden lost North Carolina to Trump in 2020.

Nikki Haley got almost 300K votes on February 27 in the Michigan primary.

Nikki Haley got over 75K votes ono March 12 in the Georgia primary.

Nikki Haley got 110K votes on March 19 in the Arizona primary.

Nikki Haley got over 75K votes on April 2 in the Wisconsin primary.

Nikki Haley got over 150K, more than 16% of the vote, on April 23 in the Pennsylvania primary, over a month after she dropped out.

To be sure, most polls show that Trump is still winning an overwhelming majority of the self-identified Republican voters. Trump will get most of these votes.

But Harris’ cultivation of Republican endorsements makes more sense when you think of the one-sixth of the Republican primary voters who voted against Trump long after Haley dropped.

And that’s why two recent endorsements are of particular interest. Last Friday, the co-chair of Haley’s Iowa campaign endorsed Harris.

I served as an Iowa state co-chair of the Nikki Haley for President campaign. I think both parties let us down by selecting two candidates for president in or near their 80s. I was at a loss.

Then, when President Joe Biden stepped down and endorsed Kamala Harris as his replacement, I decided to see who she really was. I was impressed with how she handled herself saying that she wanted to “earn everyone’s support.” She showed willingness to listen to a wider range of views to solve problems.

So I am supporting Kamala Harris for president.

On Wednesday, two key Haley supporters in Michigan endorsed her, including her co-Chair Bill Nowling (who once worked for Rick Snyder).

We disagree, sometimes strongly, with Vice President Harris on some of the ways we increase opportunity for everyone, but we believe she is a person of integrity. And right here, right now in this important election, character and integrity matter most of all.

We can’t say the same thing about former President Trump. Trump builds up himself by tearing down America and Americans. Just last week, during a speech that was supposed to be about battling antisemitism, the former president said the Jewish people would have “a lot to do with” the reason he might not win in November. During his televised debate with the vice president, Trump said Haitian immigrants living in Ohio were, “eating the dogs. They’re eating cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” America deserves better.

But it is more than just the strange things he says. Trump is no conservative.

I talk about most of these Republican endorsements, starting with that of the Cheneys, as providing a permission structure for Republicans to consider Harris.

But getting Haley’s former state leaders is something else, because it provides an ability to tap into a local network of like-minded never-Trumpers.

If this election turns out to be as close as people expect, it wouldn’t take many Haley voters converted into Harris voters to make the difference. If Harris wins, and by more than expected, these Republican Harris supporters can start what Liz Cheney is now proposing, a third party, representing actual conservatives who are opposed to the radical nuts who took over the Republican party.

No one knows if this concerted effort to court Republicans will work. If it fails, the time it took may end up being one of Harris’ biggest mistakes.

2024 Presidential Election: New Hampshire Primary Results

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Others have done a better job with an economy of words explaining situations. The New Hampshire primary held yesterday is such an occasion.

In this case not only are fewer words better but the adage a picture is worth a thousand words also holds true.

Democratic Party results:

(source: Ann Lipton on Mastodon)

As of 2:44 a.m. ET, Joe Biden has won the New Hampshire primary as a write-in candidate taking at least 51.3% of the vote. Only 15,354 unprocessed votes remain and may include those cast by a few doofuses who chose ineligible foreign-born Cenk Uygur who in a post on the dead bird app asked voters yesterday to write him in.

Republican Party results:

I wish there was a way to use a trigger or content warning here but I haven’t found one yet. I hope you had your barf bag or waste can handy.

(source: lolgop on Mastodon)

As of 1:35 a.m. ET, the reanimated orange-tinted wannabe-dictator corpse has won the New Hampshire GOP primary taking 54.7% of the votes counted so far compared to Nikki Haley’s 43.5%.

For ease of comparison, here are links to the 2020 and 2024 NH primary results via Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_New_Hampshire_Republican_presidential_primary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_New_Hampshire_Republican_presidential_primary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_New_Hampshire_Democratic_presidential_primary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_New_Hampshire_Democratic_presidential_primary

This is an open thread.

Complacency on Medicaid Would Feed Two Years of Ugly Race-Baiting

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I’m with DDay. I believe liberals are far, far too complacent in their wonkery-based confidence that Red States will eventually come around and extend Medicaid under ObamaCare. (See this post too.)

I keep seeing these confident predictions from health care experts that no state would be so foolish as to reject the Medicaid expansion for their state. I want to set up a poker game with these people, to provide for my family in retirement. How many times can you say “well that’s so radical and extreme, it could never happen!” and be wrong before you review your assumptions?

[snip]

The idea that you can just point to a set of numbers and say “but it’s almost all paid for by the federal government!” and convince ideologically motivated conservatives with that reasoning is really rich. The consensus opinion on the right is that giving free services to poor people puts them on the road to serfdom and crushes their innovative spirits and shackles them rather than allowing them to grow and succeed. Really they don’t want rich people to pay for “others” to get free stuff.

But I don’t even think the wonks have formulated the question properly, given that they are formulating it as wonks, rather than as partisan hacks.

Take Ezra’s formulation of the argument with regards to South Carolina, which has already announced it won’t expand Medicaid.

Take South Carolina. “We’re not going to shove more South Carolinians into a broken system that further ties our hands when we know the best way to find South Carolina solutions for South Carolina health problems is through the flexibility that block grants provide,” said Rob Godfrey, spokesman for Gov. Nikki Haley.

So how are those South Carolina solutions working out? Nineteen percent of the state’s residents are uninsured, which is well above the national average. When the Kaiser Family Foundation ran the numbers, they found the Medicaid expansion in the new law would cut South Carolina’s uninsurance rate among eligible adults by 56.4 percent. That’s the fourth-largest drop of any state in the nation. The cost of that for the federal government between 2014 and 2019? Almost $11 billion. For South Carolina? Less than $500 million.

In the short term, a rising Republican star like Haley might have reason to reject that deal. The Republican base hates the law, and so one way to build a national profile right now is to be the most implacable, unreasonable opponent of the Affordable Care Act.

But that won’t last forever. And governors also have to answer to non-Republican voters who don’t want their state missing out on billions in federal dollars, and to the hospitals in their state who have to treat uninsured patients that end up in their emergency rooms, and the insured voters who end up paying for their uninsured brethren.

What remains unspoken in these arguments (though DDay has addressed it)–even in the assessments of why these Red States already have such low rates of Medicaid coverage to begin with–is race.

Medicaid expansion in Red States is not going to be argued as “extending health insurance to uninsured adults,” but rather, “giving free stuff to people of color” (though that won’t be the phrase used).

Consider:

Enlargement of Medicaid is the single most important provision of the Affordable Care Act for people of color. It’s the way that almost all non-whites covered by the law would receive insurance.

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