Noah Rothman writes for National Review Online about interesting insights from one of Donald Trump’s former Republican rivals.
Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley’s diagnosis of what ails the Trump campaign is simple: “Quit whining” about Kamala Harris. In a Tuesday night sit-down interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, the onetime governor of South Carolina catalogued the Trump campaign’s failures since Joe Biden left the race. Her verdict establishes what may soon become the conventional wisdom that explains how Donald Trump lost a presidential race that was his to lose.
“I want this campaign to win, but the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes,” Haley added. It won’t win by talking about “what race Kamala Harris is,” or “whether she’s dumb.” And it won’t be won if Trump, J. D. Vance, and his allies continue to double down on appeal to voters who make up the MAGA movement. “Republicans need to be fighting for suburban women, for college-educated [voters], for independents, for moderate Republicans, and for conservative Democrats,” Haley concluded. “The American people are smart. Treat them like they’re smart.”
Haley advised the GOP nominee to focus not on the candidate’s grievances but on public policy. And if the Trump campaign took her advice, it would find that voters are more receptive to this approach than the luminous glow around the vice president presently suggests.
Just-released polling for the Cook Political Reports Swing State Project Survey conducted by two reputable firms between July 26 and August 2 — just days after Biden left the race on July 21 — show Trump losing the election in November. But his loss cannot be attributed to voters’ enthusiasm for what Harris plans to do with the power she’s asking Americans to grant her. Indeed, Harris’s support seems decoupled from voters’ skepticism toward her policy instincts.
