Voters and Candidates Pivot to General Election as Trump Wins GOP Primaries

Julia Press
·15 min read

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Fifteen states voted in the presidential primary contest on Super Tuesday, marking a decisive point in the election cycle. Former President Donald Trump’s campaign notched a clear victory as he marches down the path to clinching the Republican nomination. For President Joe Biden, between Super Tuesday and his State of the Union on Thursday, it’s officially the beginning of campaign season.Is Trump’s grip on the GOP’s future solidified? Will Biden be able to rekindle Trump angst to compete with Trump nostalgia?Host Saleha Mohsin and politics editor Mario Parker talk about the vulnerabilities each candidate faces, and what lies ahead in 2024.

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Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:

Saleha Mohsin: It’s just past 11pm on the East Coast on Tuesday, March 5. From Bloomberg’s Washington Bureau, this is the Big Take DC podcast. I’m Saleha Mohsin.15 states voted in the presidential primary contest on Super Tuesday. Traditionally, this is a decisive point in the election cycle.

Trump’s campaign has been working towards securing the nomination by mid-March. Tonight is a clear victory for him.For Biden, between Super Tuesday and his State of the Union on Thursday, it’s officially the beginning of campaign season.Is Trump’s grip on the GOP solidified? Will Biden be able to rekindle Trump angst to compete with Trump nostalgia?

We’ll get into all of that and more with Mario Parker, Bloomberg’s White House and National Politics editor overseeing our 2024 election coverage.

So Mario, we could sit here and talk about all of the ways that this Biden Trump matchup is going to feel like a 2020 rerun, but I actually want to hear from you, what are some of the bigger ways that it's not just like 2020 all over again?

Mario Parker: Well, in some ways, and this is what’s kind of guided our coverage, is that as much as the primary cycle has essentially been cruise control for months now, I think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects a rematch of the 2020 election. These are unprecedented times, right?

When was the last time that we've had a rematch to this degree? When is the last time we've had a former president make a comeback bid? When is the last time we had a former president make a comeback bid with 91 felony counts? When is the last time that that former president was up against an incumbent, uh, 81 years old who would presumably be 86 at the end of their second term, uh, which brings into question, uh, whether or not, the first African American, Indian American, woman vice president would essentially take the reins.

And so that's a very long winded answer is to saying just as much as things stay the same, when we look at the marquee, there's a lot under the hood.

Mohsin: Let's dig into a little bit on the Trump side. You mentioned the 91 felony counts. How are Trump's legal problems playing into his campaign?

Parker: He’s made the traditional campaign trail and his courtroom appearances one of the same. Some of the cases are delayed, for example. There's still the uncertainty as to whether or not they will take place before the election or after the election.

We saw that the Supreme Court ruled in his favor that he could stay on the ballot. That was largely expected, but those sorts of challenges, right, one could expect to continue to kind of crop up uh, during the course of the cycle.

Mohsin: So we’ve obviously seen Trump sweeping primaries since the Iowa caucuses, for the most part, and now Super Tuesday. Has there been anything about the beginning of the election cycle this year that’s surprised you?

Parker: The momentum that he gained last summer on the back of some of the legal cases and the way that the party, the GOP coalesced around him, I guess the follow through has been quite surprising. And it looks like he's going to be the presumptive nominee. Now, the devil is in the details, right? Nikki Haley was able to get, at least in some of the earlier primaries, 20, 30 percent of support. And so the question now is about whether or not Trump still has some more work to do in terms of getting the rest of the party unified around him by November.

Mohsin: I want to pick up on that theme about the interesting moment that the Republican Party is at right now because it seems to be now firmly becoming the party of Trump. Do you think that Trump's grip on the party is solidified?

Parker: Not only is his grip on the party solidified, but this completes his remaking of the party in his own image, right? So, over the coming days, the Republican National Committee will vote as to whether or not to place his daughter-in-law, Lara, at the top of the committee, the primary apparatus for the Republican Party. He's handpicked almost every part or had an impact on every part of the Republican Party at this point.

Mitch McConnell last week stepped down. He was one of the most powerful leaders of the Senate in history. And he stepped down because he feels as though that he doesn't have a place in the party and a leadership role in the party anymore. And again, that's because he's directly at odds with the Trump doctrine.

So I think what we've seen here with the sweep that you mentioned, Saleha, is essentially he's remade the party in his own image.

Mohsin: What about policy? Are his policies now the Republican Party's policies officially?

Parker: They seem to be, I mean, there's uh, still, semblances of the more traditional Republican stances, but look no further than just, the House's inability to pass aid for Ukraine, right? This is something, a few years ago there would have been anathema to the party that had touted itself as one for foreign policy, American leadership abroad, etc. The fact that the House still has yet to pass aid for Ukraine, against Russia aggression no less, kind of signals where we are with the party.

Mohsin: So Mario, do you think that the traditional Republican voter is going to fall in line and vote for Trump or do you think that they will stray and either go for Biden, a third party candidate, or just not vote at all?

Parker: That's a great question. When we look at some of the vote totals that Nikki Haley has been able to, to put on the board, right? Again, it's a small one, looks at something as 70/30 win, that's a blowout, right? But, for someone like Trump, you need that 100 percent or as close to 100 percent of the party voting for you as you possibly can, just as a hedge against any losses that you may have among independent voters, right?

So, the polling, including a Bloomberg News / Morning Consult poll shows that even as Republicans largely characterize Donald Trump as dangerous, right, they still plan to vote for him.

Mohsin: I’ve been talking to White House and Politics editor Mario Parker about Super Tuesday and what Trump will face in this election cycle.

I want to turn to Biden. We haven't seen Biden on the trail much leading up to Super Tuesday. Do you think that now that we're past that, we're going to see him actively campaigning?

Parker: Yes, from what we understand, the president will pivot immediately out of his State of the Union speech on Thursday, hit the road, which is just traditional kind of posture from the president.

He'll be going to Philadelphia, which is in the key swing state of Pennsylvania. He'll be going to Atlanta, Georgia on Saturday. We know that that's a, a very hotly contested, uh, swing state as well. And then also just leaning on surrogates and dispatching them across the country.

Mohsin: And what's the narrative that Biden is hoping to sell to American voters?

Parker: We’ll get a little bit more of his vision for a second term agenda at the State of the Union on Thursday. Some of that will be how he's he plans to that he's going to further lower costs for voters and along the lines of prescription drugs, make housing more affordable, those kitchen table issues that he frequently speaks about.

And then he'll also try to make the case that his policies have already improved the lives of Americans. One source of his frustration for the White House, for the president himself is the fact that he feels as though he hasn't gotten credit for some of the policy accomplishments that have benefited Americans. That's the Inflation Reduction Act. That's the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.

And Americans have so far been showing, not just that they're not giving him credit, but they're giving the credit to Trump.

They're giving Trump more credit on the economy. They're giving Trump more credit on foreign policy. They're even giving Trump, credit on, uh, things like, some parts of like democracy, right? While, while Biden holds a lead in that regard, you would expect his lead to be much wider than what the polls are bearing out.

Maybe that's a messaging uh, issue that the White House has to solve, they're looking at the State of the Union, from what we understand, as a seminal moment to pivot and kind of rejigger that messaging going forward, but as of right now, it's just not really setting in with voters.

Saleha Mohsin: What are some of the other challenges that Biden is facing in the campaign this year?

Parker: Well, I think the subtext to some of this is, uh, his age. There's just no way around it. Even Democrats in polls express concern about whether or not he's fit to serve a second term. And again, this is to the frustration of the campaign as well and to the White House as well. But Americans have this view of Biden that he's much older than the four years that he has on Trump.

Mohsin: I want to ask the same question I asked earlier about Trump. Do you think that traditional Democratic voters are going to fall in line and vote for Biden?

Parker: This is where it gets tricky. The calculus on the Biden side is a little bit different than the calculus on the Republican side. On the Biden side, the Biden campaign, they want to rekindle the angst that the electorate had toward Trump some four years ago and right now what they're confronted with is just this odd nostalgia for the Trump years that ‘oh, you know what? It wasn't as bad as I thought it was.’ And so now you've seen people kind of go back in Trump's column.

Mohsin: Are there specific policy issues that you see Biden leaning on in order to convince voters that he's the best choice?

Parker: He'll lean on democracy for sure, and if Trump has made his campaign synonymous with America First, Biden has essentially made his campaign synonymous with saving democracy, not just here in the US but also in places like Europe, where again, he's advocating for sustained and continued aid to Ukraine and made that an existential issue, right?

He'll, again, try to mention costs. He'll try to lean into his blue collar background and talk about how he's lowered costs on prescription drugs, how his policies have worked to lower the rate of inflation.

And then just, in terms of just, uh, social issues, you'll expect him to lean on that. This past weekend, he spoke more about the George Floyd Policing Act. You'll see him make entreaties to Black and Hispanic voters, voters of color writ large as well.

You'll see abortion. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that abortion will feature prominently, particularly given that every couple of months, the issue flares back up with Alabama being the latest with IVF, and so you'll see him campaign on advocating for women's reproductive rights.

Mohsin: So you've laid out what Biden's obstacles are on the road to re-election, but Bloomberg News has reported that Biden donors have committed more than $700 million to help him to beat Trump. And that is on top of $130 million that his campaign reported, that they had at the beginning of February.

Mario, do you think that considering everything that Biden is up against with Trump and the obstacles within his own party and campaign and messaging, that that is a competitive war chest?

Parker: Absolutely. You rather have more money than not in this instance, right? In 2020, part of the reason that Trump's campaign was undone in the final months was essentially they ran out of money. They had to go dark on advertising and some of the key swing states that we've mentioned and Biden was still flush with cash.

It seems to be bearing out, uh, this time as well. There are reports out over the, this past weekend, how the Trump campaign has been minding money a lot more closely than previous cycles. When we get into that September, October window, right, where Americans are super attuned to the election, if you're Biden, you're able to advertise on those airwaves and get your message across.

Mohsin: What about Trump? How does Biden compare to the fundraising that Trump has done and what his war chest looks like?

Parker: Well, Trump's war chest is considerably smaller. There's been the reports, including our own, about how much money his super political action committees has been devoted to or funneled toward some of his legal woes. As we just mentioned, those legal woes aren't going to go away.

And so, money is finite, right? That's money that could have otherwise been going to North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, that they won't necessarily have.

Mohsin: So on this podcast, we've previously covered how GOP donors were reluctant to get behind Trump before and even during the early primaries. Do you think that that's going to change now?

Parker: That part is a bit unclear. There still seems to be big dollar donor concern about being associated with Trump. During the primary, they were solidly with Nikki Haley. We know that Trump's made a threat to those donors saying anyone that continues to fund Nikki Haley's campaign isn't MAGA and won't be welcome should he get another term in the White House. We'll see whether or not those, that type of threat will impact whether or not the deeper pocketed donors come back to him during the summer.

Mohsin: Let's talk about some of the smaller donors and the regular voters who give money to campaigns.

Parker: Trump has essentially cast himself as the fighter for these everyday Americans who aren't rich. He's got a juggernaut in terms of small dollar campaign donations. Those retirees, those, as you just mentioned, aligned with more blue collar union workers who have been more willing to chip in 30 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks here and there. They vote with their money in some ways, and so we see the fundraising appeals when Trump goes to court or some type of legal development happens and Trump's blasting out a text message to those individuals. They're answering the bell, but with, again, increments of 15, 20, 30, 50, 100 dollars.

Biden has the deep pocketed voters. He goes out to California, Los Angeles, San Francisco pretty frequently to raise money, and he's been quite successful doing that. But in terms of tapping in and translating that energy that, that we see from the Trump folks into tangible money, Trump's been, been pretty good at that conversion.

Mohsin: Mario, do you think that we might see voter turnout drop this election, given how unhappy and unsatisfied people are about the options that they've got?

Parker: 2020 was an election in which was held amid a hundred and um, year pandemic, spilling over and dovetailing with the country's, uh, largest reckoning on race in some 50, 60 years. All those things led to just record turnout—mail in voting, just an electorate that was extremely engaged.

Now you can kind of see the apathy, right? So this election is looking a lot more like 2016 than it did in 2020. And 2016 was a, a lower turnout election.

Mohsin: Alright, Mario, thanks so much for joining, this was great.

Parker: Thanks for having me. It was great. I look forward to joining again anytime.

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