By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
McALLEN, Texas |...Another largely White state has voted and it's another victory for racist Republican Donald J. Trump. This time, it was New Hampshire, where projections had the divisive, oft-indicted former president beating last opponent standing Nikki Haley soundly.
It's a battered freight train of pain he rides, but, somehow, the 77-year-old Trump seems happy to be rolling towards that now-expected battle against Democrat Joe Biden in the 2024 General Election. The voting yesterday was called a win by The Associated Press and CNN for Trump with barely 21% of the vote counted.
Slowly and steadily, the gap widened as the tabulation proceeded. It would be an easy and unmistakable takedown of Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and an ex-United Nations Ambassador in the earlier Trump Administration.
Speaking to supporters at her campaign headquarters in Concord, Haley congratulated Trump on his victory. But she’s staying in the race.
"New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last," she said.
That challenge moves to her home state next month for the next primary. And even as some pundits are saying Haley will stay in through the Super Tuesday primaries in early March, they say her motivation may be a belief that Trump could die on the campaign trail.
Yesterday's defeat came two days after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the Rolling Pageant and threw his support to Trump.
A buoyant Trump thanked his supporters and essentially said the race for the Republican Party's presidential nomination is over. Scenes of the ex-president belied all of his legal problems, his interaction with supporters looking very much like those of a normal, unbridled candidate enjoying himself.
Trump is scheduled to return to his defamation trial in New York on Thursday. He's also still on the hook for three other trials, the result of 91 felonies filed by federal prosecutors and the State of Georgia, where he faces RICO charges to do with his alleged plot to overturn the 2020 election.
Still, a win is a win is a win in politics.
Never mind that, so far, it is essentially just a rather giddy White people carnival. Iowa, where Trump won that state's caucus a week ago, is 89.8% white. New Hampshire is 89.6% white - both figures according to the most recent U.S. Census.
South Carolina, however, will see a large number of Black voters, but Hispanics are not to be seen in the game until the March 5 Super Tuesday voting, when Texas heads to the polls.
Something about this set-up is skewed, is our feeling.
But give Trump his moment in the spotlight one more time. He is looking only to the national election in November, perhaps to hopefully win and unload the worst court cases for as long as he is president. His ongoing defamation case concerns magazine writer E. Jean Carroll, a woman who accused Trump of raping her. She won that particular case, but is now sitting in for the punishment side of things, i.e. a judge's ruling as to how much Trump will pay her.
None of that made it to the meaningful conversation ahead of the voting in Iowa or New Hampshire. Trump supporters - the MAGA sorts - are staying with him through Hell or High Water.
The odds for that showdown with Democrat incumbent Biden?
Most of the writing I've seen in the major publications says Biden will easily beat Trump.
We'll see about that all-inclusive dogfight, yes...
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