For Biden, Another Trump Nomination Presents Opportunity — and Great Risk

To be clear, nobody in President Biden’s White House would ever root for Donald J. Trump. To an individual, they take into account him an existential menace to the nation. But as they watched Mr. Trump open the competition for the Republican presidential nomination with a romp through Iowa, in addition they noticed one thing else: a pathway to a second time period.

Mr. Biden’s finest probability of successful re-election within the fall, of their view, is a rematch in opposition to Mr. Trump. The former president is so poisonous, so polarizing that his presence on the November poll, as Mr. Biden’s advisers see it, could be probably the most highly effective incentive attainable to lure disaffected Democrats and independents again into the camp of the poll-challenged president.

And so, some Democrats felt just a little torn this week because the Republican race acquired underway. None of them would cry if Mr. Trump have been taken down by somebody like former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who has one shot in New Hampshire next week to make it a race. Whatever Ms. Haley’s flaws, and Democrats see many, they don’t consider she would pose the identical hazard to democracy that Mr. Trump does.

But if she received the Republican nomination, she may pose a much bigger hazard to Mr. Biden.

The paradox remembers 2016, when many Democrats weren’t sad when Mr. Trump received the Republican nomination, on the speculation that the nation would by no means elect a bumptious reality-television star who specialised in racist appeals and insult politics. Burned as soon as, they aren’t so sure this time, however Democrats are banking on the hope that the nation wouldn’t take again a defeated president who impressed a violent mob to assist him hold energy and has been charged with extra felonies than Al Capone.

“I used to be not a type of Democrats who thought Trump could be simpler to beat in 2016,” mentioned Jennifer Palmieri, Hillary Clinton’s communications director within the election she misplaced to Mr. Trump. “Some Democrats root for Trump. I feel it’s higher for the nation” for him “to be defeated within the Republican Party and never proceed to achieve energy.” If Mr. Trump did lose, she added, she believed Biden may defeat Ms. Haley or Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.

But it may not be as simple. Ms. Haley could be susceptible to Democratic assaults for enabling Mr. Trump as his ambassador to the United Nations, and at the same time as a Republican candidate for president who largely declined to assault the previous president and wouldn’t rule out voting for him if he received the nomination.

Yet she may not be as radioactive with undecided voters. And not like Mr. Trump, who’s 77, Ms. Haley, at age 51, would have a neater time making a generational case in opposition to Mr. Biden, 81, who even most Democratic voters say is too old for another term, based on polls.

A CBS News survey released on Sunday indicated that Ms. Haley was a stronger potential challenger to Mr. Biden than Mr. Trump at this stage of the race. She held an eight-point benefit over the incumbent president in a hypothetical matchup, 53 p.c to 45 p.c, whereas Mr. DeSantis had a three-point lead over Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump a two-point edge.

For public consumption, at the very least, Democrats follow the we’ll-beat-anyone line, and the Democratic National Committee started laying the groundwork by usually attacking her and different G.O.P. options to Mr. Trump because the 2022 midterm elections. In personal, nonetheless, some Democrats agree that Ms. Haley could be more durable to defeat but categorical far much less worry about her successful than Mr. Trump, who has talked about being a dictator for 24 hours and using his office to exact retribution in opposition to his enemies.

“Most Democrats I do know are frankly terrified on the prospect of one other Trump presidency and that’s why you’ve seen President Biden and his workforce repeatedly spotlight how harmful a second Trump time period could be,” mentioned Lis Smith, a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg throughout the 2020 Democratic main marketing campaign. “Haley is perhaps polling higher now, however her numbers would come all the way down to earth when voters study extra about her positions and across-the-board help for the G.O.P.’s most unpopular insurance policies.”

Democrats have tried earlier than to recreation out which Republican candidates is perhaps simpler to beat within the fall, an train pitting pragmatism in opposition to precept. In 2022, some Democrats promoted far-right allies of Mr. Trump in G.O.P. primaries on the idea that they’d be simpler to defeat in a basic election, although that they had been excoriating simply such candidates as harmful to democracy.

Democrats are usually not repeating that type of intervention on the presidential stage this 12 months. “If anybody is rooting for Trump, that’s nuts,” mentioned Faiz Shakir, a senior adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont who ran for president in 2016 and 2020. “Careful what you would like for. He undoubtedly drives enthusiasm within the citizens, which makes considerations about turnout for Biden important.”

Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist who has turn into one of his party’s most vocal opponents of Mr. Trump, mentioned Democrats shouldn’t idiot themselves into pondering they won’t face him once more. “Dem strategists and journalists can play parlor video games in regards to the G.O.P. course of all they need however the one significant query for the Democrats is how one can wage a marketing campaign in opposition to the harmful candidate their opponents are getting ready to appoint,” he mentioned.

Unlike in 2016, Democrats can hardly say they didn’t see Mr. Trump coming. “Team Clinton missed the second to grasp {that a} populist motion from the left or proper made up primarily on free info, grievances and white nationalism wouldn’t be corrected merely on the poll field,” mentioned Donna Brazile, who headed the Democratic National Committee that 12 months. “But that is completely different,” she added. The motion has mushroomed “into a giant cultural warfare with solely two sides: You are both for Trump or in opposition to him. There isn’t any center floor.”

Mr. Biden has acted as if he fully expects to face Mr. Trump again and made clear he’s motivated by a singular need to conquer his 2020 opponent another time. He just lately advised reporters that he might not have run for a second term if Mr. Trump weren’t attempting to make a comeback.

But Mr. Biden has additionally taken swipes at Ms. Haley, as he did throughout a speech in her residence state of South Carolina final week when he mocked her for initially declining to say that slavery was the reason for the Civil War when asked at one of her campaign town hall meetings.

Mo Elleithee, a former Democratic strategist now serving as govt director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, mentioned it will be folly to attempt to predict which Republican could be higher for Democrats. “The polarization in our politics means it’s going to be shut it doesn’t matter what,” he mentioned. “Stop attempting to recreation out who you need to marketing campaign in opposition to, and begin specializing in the man you’re campaigning for. The stakes might be excessive it doesn’t matter what.”