Field Notes - July in New Hampshire

Does Trump have an electability problem? Depends who you ask.

I'm just wrapping up some fascinating field work in New Hampshire. This included attending a Vivek Ramaswamy town hall, meeting Mike Pence at a BBQ restaurant, and talking with lots of local party officials, activists, and political consultants in various towns. There were also lobster rolls and ice cream. I’m still sorting through what I got out of these various events and conversations, but I wanted to jot down some notes first.

First of all, many folks I spoke to noted that the pace of campaigning is way, way below what it normally is at this point in a presidential cycle. If you were in a Nashua diner in, say, July of 2007, chances are you would have met John McCain or Barack Obama or both of them before you even ordered your meal. Candidates are still visiting — my time here overlapped with visits by Ramaswamy, Pence, and Will Hurd, and Chris Christie is coming tomorrow — but just not with the usual frequency. This could reflect a relative lack of competitiveness and an assumption that Donald Trump is going to walk away with this, but if anyone’s going to pull an upset, it’s by doing well here or in Iowa, and it’s hard to do that without meeting a lot of people

That happened. At Goody Cole’s Smokehouse in Brentwood.

Second, while there is still much enthusiasm for Trump, there’s considerable interest in both Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy (and also RFK Jr?!?). For what it’s worth, Ramaswamy has modulated his pitch a good deal from when I saw him a few months ago in Iowa. He’s still attacking “wokeism,” and came to the stage playing Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town,” but he also says candidates need a positive vision, and his version of that is very specific plans to eliminate various federal agencies. These include the Department of Education, the FBI, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (which, he says, stifles the development of new nuclear plants).

Vivek Ramaswamy at Saint Anselm. I recommend a larger font.

Second, I was really struck by the range of interpretations of the candidate field and the electability question. For example, I spoke to several current and former political consultants who identify as never-Trumpers. When I asked them why they thought the 2020 and 2022 presidential elections were disappointments for Republicans, they seemed quite confident that it came down to poor candidate quality. Trump had alienated a lot of voters through outrageous behavior in 2020, Republicans picked poor nominees in 2022 (albeit with the assistance of Democratic ads in Republican primaries), etc. And for them, nominating Trump again would be a grave mistake, both because they don’t like the direction he’s brought the party but also because he would lose an election that another Republican could probably win.

I also spoke with a number of local activists and current and former officeholders at a county party fundraiser. These folks were mostly very enthusiastically backing Trump for 2024 and had done so in previous cycles. When I asked why they thought the 2020 election came out as it did, they unhesitatingly said there was election fraud. 2022 was somewhat different — they criticized some Republican candidates for failing to stay on message. But they also blamed the media for being cruelly unfair to Republicans and under-reporting stories critical of President Biden. They believe Trump can definitely beat Biden, especially considering Biden’s relative unpopularity, and think Trump is likely the strongest of the Republican candidates.

(I should note here that “election fraud” encompasses quite a bit. For some, it means overtly altering election outcomes through the use of corrupt machinery. But others had a more expansive concept of fraud that included things like rapidly expanding access to absentee balloting and vote-by-mail during Covid, allowing undocumented immigrants into the country over many years for the purpose of voting, and more.)

But then I spoke with some local party leaders near the seacoast who gave me a somewhat different view. They were strong boosters for Trump, but also worried that he might not be the best candidate for 2024. This, they felt, was somewhat his fault — he can alienate people with his outbursts — but was mostly the fault of a relentless media determined to undermine Trump. (They conceded the media helped put him in office in 2016.) A different Republican candidate, they felt, would probably run stronger against Biden simply for lack of media baggage Trump had acquired over the years. They mentioned Scott, Ramaswamy, and DeSantis as plausible alternatives, although conceded that DeSantis hasn’t run that well so far.

Summing up, it seems like Republicans who never liked Trump think he’s unelectable, and some Republicans who like Trump dismiss electability as a real concern because they think the election was stolen from him. In other words, people have a favorite candidate and adopt views about electability that support that. And belief in election fraud conveniently allows one to not have to think about electability. On the other hand, I did find some Republicans who like Trump but were concerned about electability.

All this is to say that the interplay between post-election narratives and candidate choice is complex! And it’s still going on! And I’m still trying to figure it out.

Meanwhile had an undersized-but-still-pretty-good lobster roll at the Goldenrod in Manchester.