It’s time for Chris Christie to drop out

Let’s be honest. Chris Christie has been a lot of fun to watch as a presidential candidate. He’s the only Republican still in the field who appears to genuinely revel in baiting Donald Trump, calling him a would-be dictator who will soon be running for office from jail.

But Chris Christie is not going to win the Republican nomination, and the entertainment value of his candidacy will soon be eclipsed by the stark reality that the longer he stays in the race, the more likely it is that his bête noire will win in a rout.

Normally, I’m a bit allergic to political pontificators recommending candidates throw in the towel before any voter casts a ballot — an effort made even more specious by Iowa’s caucuses being just a week away. The so-called “invisible primary” — in which donors, campaign operatives and political journalists pass judgment on presidential hopefuls — can have the perverse effect of shutting down voices of the unknown or the outsider, leaving a field of uninspiring retreads with good hair and cookie-cutter CVs. 

But Christie is neither unknown nor an outsider. He’s an outsized character who used to run one of the most populous states in the country and is in the middle of his second underwhelming tilt at the presidency. What the Republican party desperately needs now is a quick consolidation of the remaining non-Trump field so the ex-president has to face the undivided force of its splintered anti-MAGA wing.

That consolidation is already taking place, faster than at almost any other time in modern Republican presidential history. Amazingly, a former vice-president (Mike Pence) dropped out months ago, as did a one-time darling of the donor classes (Tim Scott) and a billionaire sitting governor (Doug Burgum). The reason for the quick whittling is obvious: Trump’s enduring strength in the polls means anti-Trumpers are getting desperate and are applying pressure. 

Christie is the next domino to fall. Despite his charisma and debating skill, he’s long been a problematic vessel for anyone seeking a return to normalcy on the American right. He is a straight-shooting, former anti-corruption prosecutor — who petulantly shut down traffic lanes on a bridge to punish a political rival. He is a hard-working local boy — who always seemed to be on a beach or at Disney World when a crisis hit. And, most importantly, he is a leading anti-Trump critic — who spent years sucking up to the man he now calls a “dictator” and a “bully”.

Christie has tried to make a virtue of this last inconsistency. Last week, his campaign — which uses the tagline “the truth matters” — went on the air in New Hampshire with an ad admitting his support for Trump was “a mistake”.

“I did it because I thought I could make him a better candidate and a better president,” he says in a stripped-down take to camera. “Well, I was wrong.” Knowing Christie’s own spotted political history, it’s a hard one to take seriously, particularly after he signs off the ad arguing “the most important thing is character”.

In any other election year, Christie’s candidacy would not present an existential threat. In a normal presidential contest, Christie may have even served an important role in calling out Trump’s misdeeds. But right now, he’s hardly alone in doing so, and there’s a more important dynamic at play: Most of the upcoming Republican primary contests are “winner take all”, meaning Trump can run the table with a plurality of the vote — much as he did in 2016. 

Quickly narrowing the field to Trump vs Nikki Haley, which now seems the most likely endgame, would not guarantee the former South Carolina governor automatically wins over supporters of Christie and Ron DeSantis, her biggest challenger to the anti-Trump mantle. But doing it before Iowans and New Hampshirites cast their ballots would certainly help give her a better shot.

Trump’s persistent and large lead (despite his manifold indictments) has made clear to all political observers that his supporters will not be abandoning him any time soon. But while that gives his backing within the party a hard floor, it also has something of a hard ceiling. In most early-voting states, he has pretty consistently remained around 50 per cent in the polls. That would suggest the other 50 per cent is up for grabs. 

If Christie were to withdraw, most of his supporters would almost certainly go to Haley. The latest FT-Michigan Ross poll, published this weekend, asked which Republican candidate was most competent to manage the US economy. Of those who chose Christie, the largest share (30 per cent) said they would back Haley as their second choice (48 per cent said none of the above, or didn’t know). No other candidate came close. 

Rana, my question for you is whether I’m a fool to still think there’s any chance someone other than Trump will become the Republican nominee. I still think that the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterms show that Trump’s support isn’t majoritarian and that there’s a soft underbelly that a strong Republican rival could exploit — especially since Trump is likely to spend most of primary season in court. But maybe I’m deluding myself. 

Recommended reading

• As Haley rises in the polls, major news organisations are beginning to deploy reporters to tell parts of her intriguing life story so that voters can get a better idea of who she is. One of the better recent takes I’ve read is this weekend’s piece in the Washington Post that examines Haley’s political coming-of-age moment: the 2010 gubernatorial race in South Carolina. The Post argues it was the race that made her political career, and has a lot of similarities to her current campaign for president.

• The story of women in western intelligence services is finally having its moment, first with a piece a year ago by my colleague Helen Warrell about female spies at Britain’s MI6, and now a book by American journalist and author Liza Mundy called “The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA”. Foreign Policy magazine had the clever idea of having a woman who is perhaps the most famous living female ex-spy review Mundy’s book: Valerie Plame, whose CIA cover was exposed for nakedly political reasons back in the George W Bush administration. Plame’s review is compelling take on her own rough rise (and even rougher fall) in the American intelligence community. 

• There has been so much written about artificial intelligence in recent months that it’s impossible for one person to take it all in. But the New Yorker recently had excellent pieces about two of the most important players in the AI industry: OpenAI and Nvidia. The first one looks at Microsoft’s role in the recent upheaval at OpenAI, and the second lays out how Nvidia has become the dominant chip player in the AI space. Both have a nice “for the uninitiated, start here” narrative structure, too. 

How can liberal democracies meet the challenge of mass migration? Join FT journalists, Martin Wolf and Alec Russell, as well as, expert guests on January 24 1pm GMT for a subscriber-exclusive webinar. Register for free here.

Rana Foroohar responds

Peter, I understand the need for delusion at the moment but I’m worried that we really are headed for Trump 2, in lieu of any major change vectors. What might those be? First, it’s possible that the 14th amendment will be used to prevent him from actually being the candidate — Jamelle Bouie of the NYT gives a good account of why and how that could happen. But it’s worth noting the negative externalities should the Supreme Court find that Trump isn’t allowed to run. In the opinion of Ross Douthat, that decision itself could cause insurrection. It will be an interesting test of the independence of this court either way.

I do think Trump will end up being the candidate, and I think that the question then becomes how Biden will do being on the other side of the man with more animal spirits than anyone else I can think of. As you know, I love Biden and think that nearly all of this administration’s policies have been vectorially correct. But we have to hope that Biden brings that end-of-campaign mojo that we saw last time around (remember, nobody even thought he would be the Democratic nominee for 2020 until the very end), and that nearly everything else goes right — soft landing, no major disruption to oil in the Middle East, no big inflation spike etc. It’s a lot to ask for. But one final thing to be hopeful about here is that while Trump is leading in most of the polls, Biden still leads in some polling among those most likely to vote. So get out there and vote Swamp readers!

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In response to “What’s in store for the US political economy in 2024”:
“The Democratic party message is not going to get through to swing voters in swing states while a lot of noise — false, fabricated, and otherwise — will cloud the public debate space. In a presidential election year, a national political party communicates its programmes and accomplishments through the voice of the presidential candidate. To be effective, this requires a candidate who can establish a charismatic connection with voters that provides a high-wattage channel that connects message to voters . . . This goes back to Marshall McLuhan and the medium is the message rule. ” — Paul A Myers