Super Tuesday? Team Trump has eyes squarely on Joe Biden and the November election

PALM BEACH — The former president bidding to be the next president landed an apparent "Super Tuesday" knockout punch and then presented a toned-down version of himself to the nation in an uncharacteristically short address in which he atypically called for unity.

Donald Trump swept nearly all Republican primaries and caucuses, from Alaska to Alabama and Maine to California, setting up a potential clinching primary in his home state of Florida on March 19. By night's end, Trump had skyrocketed his delegate count to almost 1,000, a shade over 200 away from the nomination, in what is by any account a historic and remarkable political comeback.

Even before the roll call of primary triumphs began on network programs, Team Trump conceded they had their eyes squarely fixed on winning the general election against President Joe Biden which lies exactly eight months away.

"I think it's going to be a continuation of what we've actually been talking about for the last several months," said a top Trump campaign adviser, Chris LaCivita, of how the campaign will present its case to the broader American public. "It's the failure of Bidenomics, it's the border invasion, it's the loss of the stature of the United States on the world scale. Insert issue and you know we have a mile to walk on."

Pitch to less partisan, more reticent, swing borders begins in earnest

The challenge until Nov. 5, pollsters and analysts have said, is how Biden and Trump, two candidates who register low favorability and high negative approval ratings, can win over independents, moderates in their parties, and those all-important "swing" voters in as many as 10 battleground states that will decide who will be in the White House a year from now.

Jeremy Gruber, senior vice president of Open Primaries Inc., a group that advocates giving voters not affiliated with either major party a voice in primaries, said neither Trump nor Biden "has seriously reached out" to independents who he said "will be the margin of victory."

Even in Florida, Trump's home state which is considered crimson red for 2024 purposes, Gruber said there are four million independent voters. And, like their counterparts in other states, they are impatient.

"Independents don’t like this state of affairs. They're tired of the partisanship. They vote for candidates, not parties," he said. "Right now neither party has made a strong play for independents. They will be the real wild card this November."

A poll released Monday by Florida Atlantic University and Mainstreet Research held a particular warning sign for Trump. Asked why they would not vote for him, the top three responses were: his connection to the Jan. 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol (30%); his "personal behavior" (21%); and the four sets of criminal indictments against him (14%).

Kevin Wagner, an FAU pollster and political scientist, said it caught his attention that 28.5% of the Republicans surveyed showed unhappiness with the former president's conduct.

"Some of those things, especially Jan. 6, might be durable," Wagner said of voter turn-off by Trump. "It might give us an early insight into voters who just won't change their minds that they're not going to rejoin the former president's coalition."

Trump-Haley friction flares again as last GOP rival drops out

On Wednesday, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who scored a single primary win Tuesday in Vermont, suspended her campaign. But rather than a unifying moment as Trump forecasted Tuesday evening, it became another flashpoint between the two rivals.

"Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion, despite the fact that Democrats, for reasons unknown, are allowed to vote in Vermont, and various other Republican Primaries," Trump wrote on his social media platform Wednesday morning. "Much of her money came from Radical Left Democrats, as did many of her voters, almost 50%, according to the polls."

Trump's lashing of Haley, and disparaging of her support among independents, moderate Republicans and even Democrats, does not bode well for a fall big tent-style campaign.

That is something Haley warned about last month after another Trump blast in which he threatened that anyone supporting her will be "permanently barred" from the MAGA movement.

"That is an equation to lose a general election," Haley told Fox News at the time. "This is supposed to be a big tent where we want more people to come in."

FAU's Wagner said the expectation is that after a candidate wins the majority of delegates, those who supported his intra-party rivals "come home" and galvanize around their nominee "at a very high rate, almost universally so." But he said that, given the "well-held beliefs" about Trump, such a coalescing may not be so automatic.

"We don't know to what extent the voters choosing to vote for Nikki Haley or somebody else are likely to come home. Many have expressed that they are not going to come home," he said. "In an election that is likely to be close, and we have it very close, if a good number of those non-Trump voters do not return to the former president then he is going to have a tough time."

Trump rips into Biden on border, but omits his more bombastic, dystopian talking points

Shortly after 10 p.m., Trump, preceded by his adult children and their significant others, entered the Mar-a-Lago club ballroom named after him to claim victory and set the stage for a rematch with Biden.

The roughly 20-minute populist address, an hour shorter than Trump's usual rally speeches, extolled the trade treaties, tax cuts and foreign policy achievements, such as the Middle East Abraham Accords, of his single-term presidency. If given "four more years," as some in the crowd packed into the Mar-a-Lago ballroom chanted, Trump promised to deliver U.S. energy independence, slash inflation and restore U.S. prestige abroad.

"You'd only have success and that's what's going to ultimately unify this country, and unify this party," he said. "We have a great Republican Party with tremendous talent and we want to have unity. And we're going to have unity, and it's going to happen very quickly."

Trump did check off cherished Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement talking points in bemoaning what he said was the descent of America into "third world" status and called Biden the "worst" president in U.S. history. But unlike his stump speeches, Trump did not vow "retribution," or repeat the baseless allegations of massive 2020 election fraud, call Jan. 6 defendants "hostages," denigrate prosecutors handling his felony cases or demean with a derogatory nickname Haley.

Trump aimed his sharpest rhetoric, like in his campaign speeches, at the Biden administration's handling of the border.

He again assailed the crisis at the border with Mexico as an unprecedented "invasion" and conjectured the number of people who have entered the country could be as high as 15 million people — U.S. authorities say the number is 7.2 million since 2021.

Trump repeated his campaign trail assertion that immigrants are "coming from rough places and dangerous places" but did not repeat his bombastic claims that the migrants are coming straight from insane asylums and prisons, nor did he liken them to the serial murderer Hannibal Lecter of the "Silence of the Lambs" movie.

"We are going to make our country greater than ever before and we're going to do it quickly," he said near the conclusion.

Super Tuesday: Look who was at Trump's Mar-a-Lago bash. And what they said.

Trump base stars, leaders say ex-president should be himself, make America MAGA

At Mar-a-Lago Tuesday night, MAGA celebrities like Republican U.S. Reps. Byron Donalds of Naples and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia dismissed talk of a pivot, or change in his campaign style or substance, to woo other voters.

"I think the president's message has been pitch-perfect. It has been that way for quite some time," said Donalds. "He's focused on the things that are ailing this country. And so whether you're a Republican voter, independent voter, Democrat voter, securing our border is a number one issue in our country."

Greene said the pundits and conventional wisdom have it backward. The goal is not to water down MAGA's principles but to bring more Americans into the Trump base.

"He doesn't stick to the MAGA crowd," Greene said. "Actually that's why he's winning so big and poll after poll he's beating Joe Biden, because his policy appeals to all Americans."

She added: "We're seeing Democrat voters switch over to Republicans. We're seeing Black voters switch over to supporting President Trump. Hispanics are switching over to support, and it's because his policies are for our country for every American, not for identity, but for every single American so we're excited to see it happen."

A running average of Trump's favorability has him on an upswing. The FiveThirtyEight website listed Trump on Monday at a 52.2% unfavorable rating versus 43.4% favorable, a gap of 8.8 points underwater. But that is markedly better than the negative 18-point gap on July 19 when Trump's unfavorable rating stood at 56.8% against just a 38.8% favorable average.

And to Donalds and Greene's point, on Wednesday, a Republican arch-critic of Trump on Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, endorsed Trump.

“It should come as no surprise that as the nominee, he will have my support,” said McConnell, noting that it is "abundantly clear" that Trump is the choice of "Republican voters to be our nominee."

Larry Snowden, president of the Trump fan group Club 47 based in West Palm Beach, also eschewed talk of a pivot or more moderate brand of Trump.

"I've known the man quite a while. I've been following him since 2015. I don't want him to change his message, and I don't think he will," he said. "I'm one of these let Trump be Trump people. As long as Trump says, what he himself feels, he does better."

Then Snowden added: "I hope he stays with what he feels like saying because that's why he's so popular with the conservative people."

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump, MAGA had eyes squarely on Joe Biden, 2024 election at Mar-a-Lago