Election 2024: The Only Thing Haley Has Left (Or, Really, Ever Had At All)

In yesterday's Nevada presidential primary, GOP side, Nikki Haley lost.

She didn't lose to Donald Trump, who didn't participate.

The GOP had a primary and a caucus. Candidates could only participate in one. The caucus, not the primary, selected delegates to the Republican National Convention, but since the caucus was pre-rigged to preclude any possibility of a non-Trump victory, Haley decided to use the primary to make a statement, presumably by winning it.

She didn't get to make that statement. She lost not to Trump but to "none of these candidates," a ballot option required by Nevada election law.

Instead, she got to preemptively make the only statement she's ever really had the ability to make truthfully, albeit preemptively and with effect -- possible, but not guaranteed effect -- only in the future.

Quick recap: She came in third in the Iowa caucus. She came in a distant second in the New Hampshire primary. She got embarrassed in the Nevada primary. She'll almost certainly be crushed in her home state (South Carolina) primary. If she keeps running for the GOP nomination, she'll keep on getting the "bug on the windshield of a speeding car" treatment.

But her main argument for nominating her has always been "I can beat Joe Biden -- Donald Trump can't."

If she's wrong, her political career is over (and has been over ever since she declared for the GOP nomination, if not before).

If she's right, she's Cassandra, and the statement she's preemptively making (with an eye on 2028) is "I told you so. You wouldn't listen, but I told you so. Ready to listen now?"

As a betting proposition, she's better off remaining "in the race" than dropping out.

If her claim that Trump can't beat Joe Biden is wrong, she's already lost pretty much everything she had to lose. It's not going to get any worse for her as political career futures go.

If she's right, staying in makes a future win more likely by letting her continue to get that message out to people who aren't supporting her this time, by keeping faith with her current supporters so that they remain supporters, and by using the time and money available to her to build durable campaign organizations in all those upcoming primary states -- campaign organizations that can be reactivated four years from now instead of having to be rebuilt from scratch.