Welcome to Trail Mix, your 2024 sanity guide. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at jake.lahut@thedailybeast.com.
This week, we explain how another effort to hold Donald Trump accountable is helping him and dive into how his campaign and Joe Biden’s plan to fight over Gen Z voters.
GROUNDHOG DAY
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For Donald Trump’s GOP challengers, the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday to boot him from the state’s primary election couldn’t have come at a worse time.
With just weeks to go until the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, candidates like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley—who is picking up late momentum—are now spending precious time running interference for their biggest rival.
Haley told voters in Iowa that night “the last thing we want is judges telling us who can and can’t be on the ballot.” DeSantis knocked the decision as straight out of a Democratic “playbook” to “give [Joe] Biden or the Democrat or whoever the ability to skate through this thing.”
Characteristically for a candidate who has run more as a MAGA enforcer than a serious candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy went as far as promising to remove himself from the Colorado ballot in solidarity with Trump, and called on the rest of the field to do the same. (The Haley campaign would only confirm she has no plans to remove herself from the Colorado ballot.)
A majority on Colorado’s court decided to remove Trump from the primary ballot on the basis that he “engaged in insurrection,” disqualifying him for office under the 14th Amendment. It was an unprecedented decision, but time and time again Trump’s unprecedented conduct and its consequences have proved to be a forcefield for his 2024 campaign.
Just like Trump’s four criminal indictments, the Colorado ruling puts his challengers in the same tough position: defend Trump, or risk potentially alienating more voters in the party base who may not love the former president but hate the prosecutions against him.
For Trump, “it’s a huge advantage,” a source close to the Haley campaign told The Daily Beast, requesting anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on behalf of the candidate. “The only person who benefits from that ruling is Trump, and everyone else is just gonna have to wait for the news cycle to roll by and fight to get their message out.”
That will be a challenge. Unlike the usual indictment news cycles, the Colorado decision—likely headed to the Supreme Court for a final ruling—is the type of external event the rival campaigns were dreading because of its ability to persistently draw headlines.
Right in the home stretch of an otherwise highly static primary, Trump’s opponents are stuck in a cruel version of “Groundhog Day,” seemingly starting from zero each time the law comes for Trump.
At this point, rivals like DeSantis are left to complain that Trump’s indictments are actually an unfair advantage.
“I would say, if I could have one thing changed, I wish Trump hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff,” DeSantis told the Christian Broadcasting Network on Thursday.
Some GOP players are flummoxed that this seasoned and well-credentialed field of challengers wasn’t ready for this dilemma.
“It is a weird situation, but they should’ve all been prepared for this,” the source close to the Haley campaign said. “Since 2016, Republican candidates have had to deal with Trump. It’s always a battle between having to get your message out and dealing with whatever Trump is up to at the time.”
But keeping up with Trump and his sprawling legal defenses, it turns out, is hard.
“I think at some point, you reach a point of diminishing returns,” a source close to the Christie campaign told The Daily Beast. “One indictment after another, one new witness after another, one judge’s ruling after another, can something be delayed, can’t it be delayed—I don’t have any research data on this, but there’s a point where you get desensitized to it.”
Even though the Christie supporter thinks their candidate does a great job making the case against Trump on the trail, they still acknowledge the Colorado news has taken the wind out of everyone’s sails because, whether the other candidates want to or not, they have to talk about it.
“It’s a current event, it’s a new issue,” the Christie backer said. “But in terms of the voting public, they’re just gonna say it’s one more thing.”
Still, there’s a hope among the rival campaigns that some portion of Trump’s supporters are reaching their limit.
Nikki Haley speaks to the press in Agency, Iowa, on Dec. 19, the day of Colorado's Supreme Court ruling.
CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA/AFP via Getty ImagesGiven the 2024 GOP primary’s brutal delegate math, Trump could very well lock up the nomination by Super Tuesday on March 5, but there are cracks showing among the MAGA base. A surprisingly high 22 percent of self-identified Trump supporters said he shouldn’t be the party nominee if convicted of a crime, according to the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll.
Once voters pull the curtain behind them in the voting booth, the thinking goes among some involved with the rival campaigns, the totality of Trump’s legal peril will finally hit.
“When you have to mark a ballot,” the source close to the Christie campaign said, “it can be a little bit like putting down that loan application. It can really put things in black and white.”
GENERATION MAGA?
For decades, Democrats have banked on young voters to win them presidential elections, but there are signs that the 2024 election could finally break that tried-and-true strategy.
A survey of the crowd at Trump’s recent rally at the University of New Hampshire illustrated some of the reasons why.
“I’m pro-choice,” Alyssa Parsons, a first year student at UNH and a Trump supporter, told The Daily Beast. “And that’s something where you have to put priorities—our economy, I would say, I prioritize over abortion. And even with Roe v. Wade, because it was by state, if it’s a necessary thing, there’s still somewhere I can go.”
Parsons, like many of the young voters The Daily Beast spoke with at the rally—all of whom made it out despite the event falling in the middle of finals week—said remote learning during the pandemic and Biden’s handling of the economy are some of the main reasons they’re no fans of Democrats.
“I was really excited to see Trump come on campus, I’m a big Trump supporter,” Cassidy, a senior nursing major at UNH who wished to withhold her last name, told The Daily Beast. Cassidy voted for Trump in 2020, and while she said she considered supporting Nikki Haley, she’s firmly in the former president’s camp and has no intention of voting for Biden.
Cassidy said immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border was her main reason for voting Trump in 2020, and it remains a top issue for her.
Although the polling of young voters has been scattershot, the Trump campaign is seeing promising signs of winning over voters aged 18 to 29, with a New York Times/Siena College poll from Tuesday showing the former president ahead of Biden by 2 points. The next day, however, a YouGov/Economist poll showed Biden ahead of Trump with the same age group by almost 30 points.
Even in some of the good polls for the Trump campaign, there are serious warning signs. The same Times/Siena poll indicating Trump’s edge among young voters also showed plenty who disagree with Biden’s support for the Israeli government but still plan on voting for him if it’s a rematch against Trump.
Those Biden voters are also more likely to say they’re committed to voting in 2024 than 18 to 29-year olds supporting Trump. Young voters in that poll who disapproved of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war were also more likely to say they didn’t vote in 2020.
The Biden campaign highlighted Vice President Kamala Harris’ multi-state college tour, a $25 million ad buy on Black and Latino media which includes a 15-second digital spot touting the administration’s investment in historically Black colleges, and new organizing programs aimed at turning out Black voters as key components of their youth vote outreach.
Although Trump has put himself out there to younger audiences, the Biden campaign argued they have a clear case to make with voters under 30.
Trump takes the stage at his rally on Dec. 16 in Durham, New Hampshire.
JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images“No obscure conservative podcast appearance erases the truth: Donald Trump doesn’t just not care about young people—he wants to make their lives as miserable as humanly possible,” Biden campaign spokesperson Seth Schuster told The Daily Beast in a statement.
Schuster pointed to Trump’s Supreme Court picks voting against Roe, his administration’s policies on climate change, opposition to student debt relief and gun control as the primary contrasts. Trump is “more than happy to kick more than two million Americans under 26 off their parents’ health insurance,” he said, “just ‘cause!”
As for the Trump campaign, their strategy for young voter outreach is a murkier picture. The campaign did not respond to a request to elaborate how they plan to engage young voters.
Abby and David, a pair of juniors at UNH who also didn’t wish to share their last names, said they came to the rally out of pure curiosity. But they couldn’t see themselves voting for Trump.
“I think it was interesting he came to [campus] during finals,” Abby said. “Some people already went home.”
OFF THE BEATEN PATH
The Haley veep strategy. Both DeSantis and Christie have taken to a new favorite line of attack on Haley. Trump’s former United Nations ambassador, they say, is merely running to be Trump’s next VP.
“For years, Nikki Haley has wanted to be Donald Trump’s Vice President... and now she is using her 2024 candidacy to finally make her VP dream a reality by following the lead of the former president as they've combined to spend over $30 million against Ron DeSantis, all while she refuses to attack Trump,” the DeSantis campaign wrote on trumpnikki2024.com, a new micro-site launched this week to hammer home the message.
Sources close to both campaigns say they expect the candidates to stick to the tactic as they seek to make a final impression on voters ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire. Haley told reporters in New Hampshire last week she isn’t running “for second place,” she also hasn’t explicitly ruled out being a VP pick. “When she hasn’t ruled out being his vice president,” Christie recently told CBS News, “I don’t think you could take her as a serious contender against him.”
Haleymentum? At least in New Hampshire, Haley is polling closer to Trump than she ever has. A new Saint Anselm College poll conducted earlier this week showed her doubling her support from September, going up from 15 percent of the vote to 30 percent on the heels of Gov. Chris Sununu’s endorsement.
Still, even if Haley subsumed Christie’s support—a not insignificant 12 percent—it still wouldn’t be enough, on paper, to top Trump. Notably, the same poll had DeSantis falling all the way down to just 6 percent support. At the very least, the survey is early proof of the Sununu bump the Haley campaign was hoping they’d get following the endorsement, which appears to have come mainly at the expense of DeSantis so far. “I would settle for a four-point victory for Nikki Haley on January 23rd,” Sununu told local media on Wednesday, “and something tells me I might get it."
CAMPAIGN LIT
Spoiler alert. Liz Cheney is scaring the daylights out of Never Trumpers over the prospect of a third-party 2024 bid, Sam Brodey reports.
The Death Star’s fatal flaw. The super PAC Never Back Down was supposed to be DeSantis’ weapon to take down Trump. It turned out to be a historically bad move, Jake Lahut reports.
Keeping abortion off the ballot. Republicans are making a push across several states to ensure the streak of ballot referendum wins for abortion rights comes to a screeching halt, Alice Miranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly report for Politico.
The ‘This Is Fine’ campaign. Despite growing pressure from Democrats to right the ship, the Biden campaign is taking a Keep Calm And Carry On approach to the president’s re-election bid, Gabe Debendetti reports from Biden HQ for New York magazine.
