David, what do you think? Why do you think this happened so soon?

Well, first of all, presidential campaigns end usually for one main reason, and that is that the money dries up. The money dries up when you are not performing up to expectations. That is what has happened here with Ron DeSantis. You fall 30 points behind Donald Trump in Iowa after you had just bet the whole farm on Iowa, if you will. That was a really disappointing distance second place showing. So he came out of Iowa with no momentum to build in New Hampshire, not a natural electorate for him anyway. It's so intriguing. In South Carolina this week, he was answering questions, and he was making the case, Nikki Haley appeals to independence of moderates. You can't really win a nomination race that way. I appeal to Conservatives. He said, for instance, I went to all these Iowa caucus sites on Iowa caucus night, and you know what they told me, the Trump voters? They told me, They are with me in 2028. That, to me, indicates that you have this monster of a blockade if you are Ron DeSantis, and that is Donald Trump. You're appealing to a lot of the same voters and trying to make yourself the Trump alternative, except these are not voters looking for a Trump alternative.

They want to double down on Trump, and they were talking to those same kinds of voters.

Yeah, as you said, he hit all 99 counties in Iowa and had that disappointing result. I suppose there's some wisdom, if you can find any in all of this, in getting out before the New Hampshire primary. You don't want to take a beating in the New Hampshire primary, finish a distant third, and then stumble into South Carolina, and who knows what happens after that. I suppose The writing was on the wall.

There's no doubt. He was not part of the New Hampshire conversation. He had already fated so substantially because he had pulled himself off the air, largely in New Hampshire. He wasn't even in the final weeks when they put everything into Iowa. So what happened is, you're right, he would have been very much a third distant... We had a poll out this morning, Jim. It showed him with 6% support in New Hampshire. So he was a non-factor. And so how do you build momentum off of a non-factor in New Hampshire when you've got weeks to go before the South Carolina primary, where all the polling shows Donald Trump pretty significantly ahead, and of course, it's Nikki Haley's home state. The path ahead for DeSantis, as he acknowledged in his remarks today, there was no clear path ahead to this nomination. He just acknowledged the reality of the situation. There was no point to stay in this race for him. But my God, the year of 2023, you go back a year ago now, he was actually really in contention with Donald Trump in some polls. Donald Trump had come off of those 22 midterm in a somewhat weakened political state.

People thought a lot of the candidates he backed caused the Republicans to lose key races. Here's this guy, he comes off this 19-point re-election victory. As Steve said, it just was squandered. Month After month, after month after month. It was like a textbook example of how not to run a presidential campaign. That is what DeSantis leaves behind.

It seems, and we saw this in 2016, David, when we covered that race, a fractured field helps Donald Trump. Here we are, yet again, right before the New Hampshire primary. This race is down to two candidates. Fractured no more, right? Fractured no more. Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. I can't remember a primary contest where it was down to two candidates this early. That's usually around Super Tuesday or something like that.

Exactly. In fact, there's never been a non-incumbant Republican who has won both Iowa and New Hampshire. If Donald Trump wins New Hampshire on Tuesday, he will be the first non-incumbant Republican, although he's a pseudo-incumbant, I realized. Sure. He was once President to win both of those early contests. But now, Jim, to your point, okay, it was a splintered feel along. Donald Trump was able to benefit from that. Now it's a one-on-one race. Donald Trump is still dominant. So even in the one-on-one, and we'll see what the results are at New Hampshire, Nikki Haley is going to have to make an argument for why she deserves to continue to be funded in large dollars and has momentum to move forward in this race.

And guess what? After New Hampshire comes South Carolina. Well, we know Nevada comes next.

She's not competing for delegates in Nevada, by the way, because they're doing a caucus and a primary. Primary has no delegates, and she's not competing in the caucus.

But I guess the point I was going to get to was if the next big contest is South Carolina, and the polls show Trump ahead in South Carolina, she may be at the same crossroads that Ron DeSantis is today at that point.

Precisely. You're going to have to make a calculation if you're Nikki Haley. Do I want to be embarrassed in my home state? That is a question as you plot your own political future. We will see how Nikki Haley performs on New Hampshire. We got 48 hours to go. She's obviously going to run through the tape on New Hampshire. She has said, I was with her in Amherst, New Hampshire on Friday, New Hampshire will not be the end of the road of her campaign. We will see, as you say, how she calculates the best path forward from there.

All right, David Challian. Very interesting stuff. I didn't think it was going to happen this quickly, but the bottom falls out. When the bottom falls out, it falls out. All right, David, thank you very much.