As Haley loses all but one Super Tuesday state, a Trump-Biden rematch gets early start

WASHINGTON -- Four years since 2020, whether they like it or not, the American public is again going to watch a presidential election that, barring accidents, will pit former President Donald Trump against incumbent Joe Biden.

On Super Tuesday, when 15 US states and one territory went to polls to decide how more than a third of delegates would be distributed among candidates in the two parties' primary races, Trump swept all but Vermont, dealing another crushing blow to Nikki Haley, former US ambassador to the United Nations and his last remaining rival, and amassing over 700 Republican delegates, while Haley earned more than 40 as of early Wednesday morning.

Biden, as expected, won all contests except for the US territory of American Samoa, where he was beaten by previously unknown Jason Palmer. He has bagged more than 1,400 delegates so far, while other Democratic candidates only in single digits.

Mathematically, only when a candidate wins a majority of their party's delegates, who will vote at the party's convention this summer, can they clinch the nomination. For Trump, it's 1,215 out of the 2,429 Republican delegates nationwide. But together with the US Supreme Court's decision on Monday that cleared the doubts on Trump's eligibility to run for the US president, the over 1,000 delegates he has accumulated as of early Wednesday, over Haley's some 90, has made his nomination almost inevitable.

After Haley's long and tough climb since January and a tight campaign schedule over the past weekend, Super Tuesday was yet another disappointment for her. She secured only Vermont with more independents. Virginia, with more moderate voters, might have done her a favor, but it didn't.

She had vowed repeatedly that she would stay through Super Tuesday to allow voters to make their voices heard, saying: "We can't afford four more years of Biden's failures or Trump's lack of focus."

Nikki spent her Super Tuesday night watching tallies in South Carolina, where she grew up, served as the first female governor from 2011 to 2017, and trailed Trump by 20 percentage points in the primary on Feb. 24. She has not given remarks about the past Tuesday. Questions remain if she will stay, while there has long been inner-party pressure on her to drop out and allow Republicans to unite around Trump.

The Super Tuesday, the most important day in the primary cycle, was essentially far less suspenseful than it had been.

On the Republican side, in primaries and caucuses before Super Tuesday, Haley won only Washington D.C., a heavily Democratic city where only a small portion of 2,030 voters voted in the Republican primary.

In the first Republican primary in Iowa, Trump secured over 50 percent of votes, while Haley even placed behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, previously considered a promising right-wing challenger to Trump who later withdrew. Then, in New Hampshire on Jan. 23, a significant battleground state where the governor Chris Sununu had endorsed Haley, she lost by roughly 10 percentage points.

On the Saturday before Super Tuesday, she lost Michigan, Missouri, and Idaho, all by decisive margins.

Before Tuesday, Trump already had 273 delegates, while Haley had only 43. His almost-winning streak carried his strong momentum into Super Tuesday, which was further cemented by polls showing him considerably ahead in every major Super Tuesday state.

On the Democratic side, both of Biden's major competitors -- Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips, and US author Marianne Williamson, who quit in early February and returned on Feb. 28 saying that Biden was "clearly a weak candidate" -- gained no delegates. That probably explains why the Democratic primaries have largely been left out in US media coverage.

For Haley, she may still gain from her failure. Observers say a long run through Super Tuesday against Trump has proved her base in independent voters and moderate Republicans, which is deemed by some as a reason for Trump to pick her as his election partner, and may serve as an edge in her possible campaign in 2028, if she still has that ambition then.

Now, Trump and Biden have come early to their second one-on-one contest since 2020. After primaries in the coming months, each party will formally choose their presidential candidate in Republican and Democratic conventions in July and August. Then the candidates will participate in three televised debates before the voting day on Nov. 5.

Though enjoying overwhelming inner-party advantages, both Trump and Biden have troubles when coming to the general electorate.

Besides his insulting rhetoric and controversial but voter-earning stances on issues like abortion and immigrants, Trump is beset with 91 criminal charges across four criminal cases, surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot in which many view him as an insurrectionist, his mishandling of sensitive government documents and cover-up payments to a porn star during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Having not gone to trials, the cases had posed a real threat until Monday, when the Supreme Court denied a Colorado ruling that excluded Trump from the state's primary ballots for his engagement in what has been labeled an attempt to overthrow the government on Jan. 6, 2021. The Supreme Court's decision applies to other states that also disqualified Trump.

Though the US Constitution sets no limitations based on character or criminal record on a presidential candidate, which means that Trump can still run if he is convicted, polls show that he may lose some of his supporters' votes if he is found guilty, which is why last week, Trump and his team were elated to see the Supreme Court decide to take up Trump's assertion of immunity from prosecution in his efforts to challenge the outcome of the 2020 election. That has effectively postponed the legal proceedings of this case.

On whether the trials will stop Trump's re-election bid, Christopher Galdieri, a political science professor at Saint Anselm College, told Xinhua: "Not on their own ... but it's likely that an actual conviction will alienate exactly the voters he needs to either vote for him or stay home on election day."

In the latest development, New York Supreme Criminal Court judge Juan Merchan scheduled the hush-money trial on March 25. With the cases to play out in this election season, Trump will be busy commuting between courts and campaign sites.

On his part, Biden is challenged with what an incumbent always faces: dissatisfaction with his policies. He has been doubted on his economic policy, with many complaining about high prices. He was attacked in his management of the US-Mexican border. On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters gathered and marched in downtown Los Angeles, denouncing US Palestine policy, especially the Biden administration's consistent pro-Israel stance.

In the Michigan Democratic primary on Feb. 28, over 101,000 voters in the state, home to many Arab-Americans, cast their votes as "uncommitted" to protest Biden's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, accounting for more than 13 percent of the Michigan Democratic primary vote. Though the "uncommitted" movement is far from substantially shaking Biden's victory, it did garner votes elsewhere on Tuesday.

And one more thing: the unstoppable passing of time. Questioning about Biden's age and the ensuing problem with his health and mental acuity is growing. According to a poll of 980 registered voters conducted in February by The New York Times and Siena College, 61 percent of the respondents that voted for him in 2020 thought that 81-year-old Biden was "too old to be an effective president."

By contrast, only 15 percent of the 2020 Trump-voter respondents said the same, though the former president is only 4 years younger than his 81-year-old successor.

In an interview in late February, Biden, addressing concerns about his age, said, "You got to take a look at the other guy, he's about as old as I am, but he can't remember his wife's name."