LIZ CHENEY MIGHT NOT BE MUCH HELP IN THE FIGHT AGAINST TRUMP THIS YEAR

Just before the New Hampshire primary, Axios reported this:

President Biden's team believes that Trump becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for president would give a much-needed jolt of energy to voters and grassroots donors who don't want to see Trump back in the White House....

The president's campaign has internal data indicating that most of the undecided voters Biden is targeting don't think Trump will be the Republican nominee because they haven't tuned into an election that's more than nine months away.

That's led Biden's team to believe the dynamics of the campaign will change significantly once those voters realize it really will be a Biden-Trump matchup in November....

It's possible that some of them have tuned in to the election and have been told by very savvy reporters at elite media outlets that there's still a chance to beat Trump, so clap harder!

I think it would have been good for Democrats if Republicans had declared Trump the party's presumptive nominee at next week's Republican National Committee gathering in Las Vegas, a proposal that was floated by a Trump loyalist and then withdrawn.

I also think it would be good for Democrats -- and all Trump opponents -- if Nikki Haley were to drop out now. But Democrats' favorite Republican, Liz Cheney, disagrees:

Former Representative Liz Cheney urged Nikki Haley to stay in the Republican primary race through Super Tuesday in an episode of “Pod Save America” that will be released on Friday. Ms. Cheney, an outspoken critic of former President Donald J. Trump, called his candidacy an “existential threat” to the nation and commended Ms. Haley for running against him, despite her long odds.

“We need to make sure that we’re challenging him and working to defeat him at every step of the way. And right now, Nikki Haley is in this fight, and I think she ought to stay in it,” Ms. Cheney said....

How long can "clap harder!" anti-Trumpers keep this up? I'm afraid that even after Trump cleans Haley's clock in South Carolina and in the Super Tuesday contests, these folks will be saying Haley should stay in -- stay in all the way to the convention, Nikki! -- because, heck, Trump could choke on a hamburger, or could be convicted in a criminal trial and sent to prison, even though there's no reason to believe that any judge will have the guts to send Trump to prison while he has an appeal pending, and Republican voters will probably rally around Trump even more intently if he's convicted but continuing to campaign. (He fights!) This is assuming that any of the trials even take place as scheduled before the convention.

For all we know, the "clap harder!" folks might insist that Trump could still be removed from the Republican ticket even after the convention. At that point, I think it will be hard for even most low-information voters to believe that Trump could be replaced as the Republican nominee. But some really might still think it could happen (and might be told it could happen by respetable media outlets, and maybe even by Liz Cheney and other anti-Trump right-wingers).

Cheney, by the way, is still not ruling out running herself:

Ms. Cheney has not endorsed a presidential candidate, and has teased the possibility of a third-party run herself. She didn’t rule that out on the podcast, and she told Jon Favreau, the podcast’s host and a former speechwriter in the Obama administration, that she “certainly” thinks a third-party candidate, whether her or someone else, will enter the race before November.

“I think we’ll see what happens,” she said. “You know, my No. 1 priority is defeating him and I think that’s going to guide whatever ultimately I decide I’m going to do.”

If her No. 1 priority is defeating Trump, she should endorse Joe Biden right now. But, of course, her priority no. 1A is electing someone who is neither Trump nor (blecch!) a Democrat, and she'll apparently chase any chimera that holds out the hope, however forlorn, of victory by a "normal" Republican in November. And who knows? Maybe she is seriously considering a No Labels run herself, which would guarantee a Trump victory. (The vast majority of her fan base these days consists of MSNBC Democrats.)

The Biden campaign is right: The sooner voters realize that the nominating contests are over, the better it is for the president's reelection chances. I think Liz Cheney sincerely wants Donald Trump to lose, but I don't think she wants the only person who can beat him, Joe Biden, to win. So she might be no help this year.