Haley as a holdout could still be more than a speed bump for Trump

Nikki Haley was never a good bet to take the Republican nomination away from Donald Trump in 2024.

She has indeed surprised many observers by outrunning the other also-rans and eclipsing all those men who were with her on stage for last year's Republican candidate debates.

But she has not beaten Trump, or come close to doing so, in any of the early primaries or caucuses. She has not proven to be an off-ramp for those in her party wary of another Trump campaign or another Trump term.

Yet even if not an off-ramp, she can still be more than a speed bump. The longer she stays in the national political conversation, the more shade she throws on the former president's prospects.

"I'm running to give people a choice," she has said, assuming they want or might need one. And while some of her financial support has decamped in recent days, she still has the money and media profile to make trouble.

That is why it is vitally important to Trump's campaign momentum to get Haley out of the race as soon as possible. History shows that when the major party nominees for president have not cleared the field of notable challengers before summer, they tend to lose in the fall.

The most recent example was Hillary Clinton in 2016

Hillary Clinton had the delegates for a first-ballot nomination but had to deal with a convention hall that often seemed dominated by the backers of rival Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont. As late as April, Sanders had said Clinton was "not qualified" to be president. At the convention, Sanders delegates were outnumbered by about 3 to 2 but restive and even disruptive during convention sessions.

On the convention's first night, Sanders' troops booed Clinton's name, even when their own candidate took the stage