Some of Haley’s attacks are geared solely to the GOP primaries. An anti-Trump TV spot that aired in mid-February features a narrator direly warning: “What is Trump saying he’ll actually do in office? A ten-percent across-the-board tax increase. More record-breaking debt.” Such fiscally conservative bromides are unlikely to end up in Biden’s fall playbook. The same goes for Haley’s pitch to religious conservatives: On Wednesday, she endorsed a harsh Alabama ruling that effectively banned in vitro fertilization, telling NBC “Embryos, to me, are babies.”
One theme that Biden will not be emulating are Haley’s anguished comments that Trump is bankrupting the Republican National Committee. In a CNN interview last week, Haley said, “I don’t want the RNC to become his legal defense fund. I don’t want the RNC to become his piggy bank for his personal court cases.” Impoverishing the GOP for personal gain is the one Trump grift that most Democrats would support.
John Kennedy in his 1961 Inaugural Address proudly declared, “The torch has been passed to a new generation.” For the past six decades, younger presidential candidates have made similar generational appeals. Announcing a run for president in 1987, the 44-year-old Biden boasted, “Our generation is eager and ready to reclaim its special legacy and redeem the promise of America for ourselves and our children.” Small wonder that Haley, 52, is stressing an analogous, albeit more vicious, age-based case against both Trump and Biden.