After last night

President Trump prevailed against Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary last night. The race was called for Trump within seconds of the polls closing. As I write, Haley is down by 11 points with 91 percent of the vote counted.

Haley took the opportunity to concede relatively soon after the race was called, when the audience viewing the results on television might have been at a maximum. PBS video of her remarks is posted on YouTube here.

President Trump derided Haley’s remarks as a victory speech. Although they had triumphal elements, I didn’t hear them quite that way. Thirty-eight seconds into her speech she proclaimed that she got “almost half of the vote.” It was my understanding there would be no math. However, it’s now a two-person race. I translated her statement at the top to concede that she had lost the contest to Trump, as she later proceeded to do expressly: “I want to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory tonight. He earned it and I want to acknowledge that.”

In the heart of her remarks Haley argued that Trump makes for a weak general election candidate. “With Donald Trump we have lost almost every competitive election,” she argued. I think she made a good case. At least I agree with it. That doesn’t mean that she would make a strong general election candidate herself. Maybe she would. I don’t know. Her problem is that the average Republican voter disagrees.

Haley vowed to carry on. In vowing to carry on, Haley seemed to stake her fortune on the South Carolina primary next month (February 24). Haley served as governor of the state from 2011 to 2017, but I don’t see any reason to think that she can defeat Trump there. It’s Trump country. Losing to him in her own home state should be a humiliating defeat.

Haley’s concession made more sense to me than Trump’s victory speech. Within the first few seconds of his opening he observed of the New Hampshire primary: “You know we won New Hampshire three times now. Three.” So far, so good. He continued: “We win it every time. We win the primary, we win the generals, we’ve won it, and it’s a very, very special place to me.”

What was he talking about? In the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020 Trump lost New Hampshire to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, respectively. Those into pattern recognition may foresee a loss to Joe Biden in New Hampshire in 2024.

I think Trump repeated the point. I understood him to make a transition from discussing his past New Hampshire primary victories to general election results about four minutes in. “If you remember,” he said, “we won in 2016. And if you really remember, if you want to play it straight, we also won in 2020 [applause] — by more. And we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016, but as they said, we lost by a whisker. Just by a whisker.”

He can’t have been talking about the 2020 New Hampshire primary, in which he pulled nearly 85 percent of the vote. He appeared to be revisiting general election results. In the general election results he narrowly lost New Hampshire to Clinton in 2016 and to Biden by a wider margin in 2020. Again, I wonder what he was talking about.

Trump did not make for a gracious victor last night. By contrast with his treatment of Ron DeSantis in Trump’s declaration of victory in Iowa, Trump harshly disparaged Haley.

Among other things, he pointed out that even Tim Scott had abandoned her to support him. Trump paused to rub Scott’s support in. Haley had appointed Scott to his Senate seat. “Did you ever think she actually appointed you, Tim? Think of it, and you are the senator of the state, and she endorsed me. You must really hate her,” Trump said.

The remark prompted Scott to express his love for Trump. Yes, that’s why Scott ran against Trump before he dropped out of the race. It was an expression of love. The self-abasement is not a good look for Scott and the cynicism is not a good look for Trump.

Harry Truman famously observed that if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. It’s an observation that remains an eternal verity.

Trump went so far as to comment on (i.e., mock) the “fancy dress” Haley was wearing. Referring to her “victory lap” in Iowa, he commented: “In life you can’t let people get away with bullshit. You just can’t do that.” I think he was referring to the result last night as he observed: “When I watched her, the fancy dress, it probably wasn’t so fancy, I said what is she doing? We won.”

Trump has this going for him. He stands to run against Biden again this time around. Biden prevailed against my cousin Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson by write-in in the unsanctioned Democratic primary. I had hoped Dean might do for Biden what former Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy did for LBJ in New Hampshire in 1968, but it was not to be.

Biden is such a weak incumbent that the Democrats have restructured the primary schedule for his benefit. Iowa and New Hampshire are out. South Carolina is in. Democrats have also kept Dean off the ballot in North Carolina and Florida. They are working to keep third-party candidates off the ballot wherever they threaten to make it in the general election — as James Freeman points out in his excellent Best of the Web column “The Anti-Competition Campaign for Biden.” It’s how they do these things in Our Democracy™.

Last night’s results will encourage Democrats to stick with their own weak horse. A Trump-Biden rematch is in the offing. Can you feel the excitement?

Biden is a weak general election candidate because he is visibly over the hill and stuck with his own record of weakness, chaos, and destruction. Trump can hark back to his strong record in office. I don’t think the loyalty of the Republican base to Trump or Trump’s strong record in office will be enough, but we shall see. Trump’s remarks in victory last night (video below) seemed to me to demonstrate some of his shortcomings as a general election candidate. Reasonable minds may disagree, but that is my take.

Primary results and video via RealClearPolitics.