By Steve Peoples, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Barely 400,000 votes have been cast in two rural Republican primaries over the span of eight days. But both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are behaving like their parties’ nominees already.
Trump’s double-digit victory Tuesday in independent-minded New Hampshire, where he was considered more vulnerable than perhaps anywhere else, was a rhetorical tipping point for both Democrats and Republicans.
“It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. And my message to the country is the stakes could not be higher,” President Joe Biden said hours after Trump’s victory Tuesday night.
Trump’s team largely agreed, even as he raged about former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s unwillingness to leave the race altogether.
“I say the general election begins tonight,” said Trump-adversary-turned-advocate Vivek Ramaswamy, who was standing at the former president’s side during his New Hampshire victory speech. “And this man will win it in a landslide.”
What comes next for a potential matchup many voters don’t want
The bluster is just a sliver of what’s to come over the next 10 months. Both parties are building out sprawling political operations backed by billions of dollars in advertising to shape the all-but-certain general election rematch between the current president and his predecessor.
It is a matchup that many voters and some elected officials did not want. Both Biden and Trump have loud detractors within their parties and glaring political liabilities. Yet no other Republican presidential candidate in history has won the first two contests on the primary calendar, as Trump polished off Tuesday night, and failed to clinch his party’s nomination. And Biden, who won New Hampshire’s Democratic primary without even appearing on the ballot, is facing only token opposition in his bid for the Democratic nomination.
Hours before Biden’s New Hampshire win was official, the…
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