It has been a week since 2024's iteration of Super Tuesday, and it is also, incidentally, a week until I return to the United States. Political news has moved on. There was a State of the Union address. More legal machinations in Trump's ongoing legal problems.
Oh, but also, the race effectively run, as the next day, Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and former Ambassador to the United Nations, suspended her campaign against her former boss, Donald Trump.
The conventional wisdom going into the campaign was that it was a make or break night for Nikki Haley, and that if she did have a chance for an upset, it would occur by a victory in a state with college educated, suburban voters---terms that have more denotation than connotation, but the general idea was clear. And it was a reason why the night allowed just the slightest bit of excitement: hitting F5 while the needle wobbled back and forth in Vermont, finally giving Haley her first victory, and a sign that Trump was not unassailable. But by the time that Haley had eked out that victory, Trump had won across the board, from Massachusetts to Texas. True, in some of those states, the margin was lower than expected. But despite the temporary election night thrill of seeing something close to competition, the overall picture was pretty clear: 14 states won by Trump, 1 state won by Haley.
Sometimes the makeup of a Super Tuesday primary can make a difference. Each cycle has a different mixture of states, and sometimes if these states are focused on one region, it can have a skewed result, which will nonetheless shift the narrative and momentum. This year's contest was a little centered on conservative, southern states, but even in New England, Haley lost Massachusetts and Maine.
And so the primary, four years in the making, ended.
Primaries can be pretty boring things. Even I, who have been studying them for a while, admit that for the average person, the obscurities of delegate math, the randomness of calendars and selection process (primary versus caucus, open versus closed), and the microfocus on demographic groups don't make for the most earthshaking of news. But sometimes all these boring little tiles in the mosaic present a more interesting picture. The 2012 Republican Presidential Primary, which was long and often did depend on things like the delegate math of in American Samoa, and featured Mitt Romney versus Rick Santorum---neither exactly explosive personalities. It was the last time a presidential contest, in the primary or in the general, was boring. And yet, for all that boredom, it actually involved substantive debates about policy and the direction of the country. For all the sound and fury of the presidential contests since 2016, very little discussion has gone on. It has been a Red Queen's Race, moving at breakneck speed, but never getting anywhere. This Super Tuesday was one of the last chances for a break from that Red Queen's Race, but with that 14-1 finish, it looks like it isn't going to happen in the Republican Party---at least not until the next presidential election (which hopefully, we will have).