In the Republican primary just concluded yesterday, Nikki (neocon) Haley registered a surprised 43% to 54% for Trump—due largely to Democrat cross over votes encouraged strongly by the leadership in both the Democrat and Republican parties and their mainstream media.
Haley thereafter declared she’s in the race long term and headed to the South Carolina primary where she’ll spend even more of her big corporate donors’ money that has been fueling her campaign from the start.
Haley will no doubt remain in the race regardless of the outcome of primaries to come. The ruling corporate and political elite in the US will continue to explore ways to prevent Trump from getting the Republican party nomination, notwithstanding the fiction of state primaries; failing that, explore ways to kick Trump off enough key states’ ballots to ensure his electoral college defeat even if he should run as the Republican nominee. Haley’s big money backers therefore need to keep someone ‘in the wings’ in the race should such efforts prove eventually successful; Neocon Nikki’s their horse in the 2024 race.
In the other wing of the Corporate Party of America (aka Democrats) president Biden also secured a win in New Hampshire even after ‘withdrawing’ from the ballot. Not that it mattered since the DNC (Democrat National Committee) has all but neutered its primary season by declaring there would be no primary debates; and has successfully kept would-be primary challenger RFKjr outside pounding on the party door, pleading to get in, but consistently ignored by the party politicos and vilified by their mainstream media (MSNBC, CNN, etc.).
Both candidates, Biden and Haley, now head to South Carolina—one of the most conservative states in the Union—which again will serve, as in 2020, to solidify Biden’s nomination. And as in New Hampshire, Haley doesn’t have to ‘win’ South Carolina either; just pull enough votes to remain a contender in the bigger big money donors’ strategy picture.
This time it will also be easier for Joe to win South Carolina than it was back in 2020, when the relatively small Democrat party in the state was essentially controlled by its ‘political Don’, Jim Clyburn, who easily engineered a coup over then challenger Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary. As soon as Sanders was politically ‘sand-bagged’ in South Carolina that year, all the other Democrat contenders in 2020 in South Carolina conveniently dropped out of the race (eventually to be rewarded later with cabinet and other sinecure positions in the Biden administration). The mainstream media quickly jumped in and declared Joe the inevitable winner of the party’s nomination, bringing him back from the polling rear of the Democrat party pack and his lackluster performance in the primaries up to that time. South Carolina 2020 was effectively the end of the Sanders campaign. The mainstream media anointed Joe the party’s nominee. After South Carolina 2020 the remaining primaries were perfunctory events.
But his time 2024, there’s no such for the DNC and party moneybags to maneuver in South Carolina. Biden has already been ‘selected’. Party primary debates have already been shut down. No challengers are allowed a public hearing by means of debates. Mainstream media in the party pocket refuses to cover their press conferences or public speech events. In South Carolina there’s not even a need for a Dean Phillips (as in New Hampshire) to maintain a fiction it’s a race. As in 2020, South Carolina upcoming ‘primary’ will once again register that the Democrat presidential nominee race is over.
If Republican party big money have decided to ride their Haley horse to the end of the race, then Democrat party leaders have decided—given Biden’s current approval rating of 34% and falling–to ride their Biden horse into the ground, if necessary.
Should Biden continue to falter as the US economy and multiplying US wars further deteriorate in the coming months—both of which are likely—the DNC and Democrat moneybags could adopt a ‘Comanche’ strategy for the last leg of the 2024 campaign.
The Comanches were the greatest tribe of the American plains in the 19th century and were famously known for their ability to avoid US army pursuers by outrunning them. The greatest horsemen of all the tribes, with the largest horse herds, they would simply ride their horses until they collapsed. Eat them. And jump on another horse to continue their getaway.
The Biden faction in the Democrat party wing of the Corporate Party of America may possibly do the same: if Biden collapses, they’ll find a way to ‘eat him’ and jump on another horse. It’s admittedly a long shot but not impossible in the unprecedented electoral season the country is now entering.
To be sure, they won’t jump to another horse until there’s no possibility of holding competitive primaries. That is, not before June. The DNC doesn’t want to give California governor, Gavin Newsom, or RFKjr., or some other dark horse, a shot at replacing Biden by holding primaries. They want to continue to ‘select’ the nominee—as they did Biden in 2020 and so far again in 2024. Anyone the DNC chooses will not be determined by any competitive primary; that person will be vetted carefully before being ‘selected’ by the DNC and the party’s big money interests who have always been behind Biden.
So the 2024 horse race now begins and we’ll see which horse gets to run a full mile or fades away after only six furlongs in the rigged ‘county fair’-like horse race that is the American electoral primary system—where some horses are inevitably drugged in order to ensure they lose while others are injected with stimulants to ensure they win.
Will the Trump horse mysteriously ‘break a leg’ rounding the back turn? The Biden horse be prematurely ‘put out to pasture’? The Haley horse somehow pull away from the back of the pack? Or some 50 to 1 dark horse like RFKjr or Newsom be allowed to even run?
Don’t anyone bother to place your bets.
Jack Rasmus is author of ’ The
Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump, Clarity Press, January 2020.