Presidential elections are highly unpredictable, especially this far in advance (the 2024 election is still more than 18 months away), but I feel quite safe in saying the 2024 declared GOP candidate Nikki Haley will not emerge as the winner. Some of the reasons:
- She’s a Republican, and her party is unpopular, having lost 7 of the last 8 popular votes for president.
- She’s a woman, and America has never elected a woman president, although I’m confident that’s going to happen. Just not to her, for the reasons below.
- She’s a person of color, and Americans have elected only one person of color; again, I think there’ll be more, but not her, for the reasons below.
- The GOP is still in thrall to Trump, who’s running; and even if by 2024 he’s dead, infirm, in jail, or just decides he doesn’t want it, there’s DeSantis and a sea of other candidates to get lost in standing between her and the GOP nomination.
- Haley is a relative nobody. Sure, she was a governor (of South Carolina, no big deal) and U.N. ambassador (who cares?), but even today has low name recognition, and most voters who’ve heard of her aren’t excited about her. She’s best known for defending the Confederate flag, then flipflopping (details here).
- She’s done other things to annoy the GOP base, too, such as opposing a GOP transgender bathroom bill and a Muslim immigration ban (same link).
- On April 25, 2023, Haley announced her position on abortion. Her platform is to “build consensus” and “start a conversation” about the issue. Good luck with that! Americans are divided on the issue (two-thirds for legal abortion, one-third intractably against), and few if any minds will change, so what’s there to talk about? On top of this, Haley said she’s “unapologetically against” abortion, which makes her unelectable with suburban women, a key swing voting bloc (and the main reason Trump lost in 2020 and Republicans got their clocks cleaned in 2022).
- She’s a clumsy campaigner. On April 26, 2023, she said voters should choose her instead of Biden because he’ll be dead within 5 years (see story here). If forecasting her opponent’s death is the best argument she has, she doesn’t have one.
Biden has low approval ratings and is unpopular in polls, but even if Haley somehow secures the GOP nomination, that doesn’t mean Democratic voters will defect to an anti-abortion Republican. Just getting the GOP nomination will require her to adopt radical positions that will alienate general election voters, because the GOP is a radical party now. And I have a hard time visualizing a racist and misogynistic party dominated by white males embracing a woman of color as their spear-carrier.
Despite Biden’s seeming unpopularity, incumbent presidents usually get re-elected absent an unpopular war, bungled crisis, or tanking economy. A recession could happen in late 2023 or early 2024, but the majority of voters are so concerned about protecting our democracy from Republicans that it won’t probably won’t do the GOP nominee much good (and none if the nominee is Trump).
The path to the White House is always long and winding. It’s hard to tell who will complete the journey. Haley could face early elimination from weak fundraising, do poorly in the early primaries and caucuses, get shredded on the debate stage, or simply fail to generate enthusiasm for her candidacy. Some people with no hope of being elected president run to get a message out, as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee did in 2020 to promote his climate change message. I don’t think Haley is one of those; she really wants to be president, and isn’t running on any particular message. Her campaign is more, “Hey, look at me.”
I don’t think that’s anywhere near enough to overcome all the hurdles and obstacles in her path: Money, name recognition, GOP biases, lack of a large following, and somewhat out of sync with her party. As a presidential candidate, she looks like someone riding a bicycle on the Indy 500 track.