(based on a fictional election scenario here https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginaryelections/s/AxN2WAt8TP)

the question is partly a matter of ceilings and floors and partly which demographic is thought to be willing to give in and take a subservient position in a coalition, and that makes one candidate very interesting to me: the tragic, the comic, the epitome of an also-ran, the turncoat ex-UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley.

Haley built her base on the Tea Party wave with Rubio and Jindal (anyone remember him?) which was the insurrectionary response to Bush fatigue as much as Obamaphobia in a way, and which was later supplanted by Trump and the Freedom Caucus.

as a Liberal Republican, Haley I think has a very narrow group of people who vote (and donate) very consistently. I'm thinking like the kind of campaign managers court gay men working in the defense industry or actively enrolled officers (yay homonationalism) as well as your standardslash and burn tax cutters, charter school lobiests.

one way I've heard this described is the C-Suite versus the Venture Bros. executives and professionals and managers and small business fanatics are inclined in their work and livelihoods and investments to want stability. a large faction of these people voted for and donated to Kamala because Trump seems like a bad boss--the folks who go, look he's a felon, he is under investigation, he's trigger happy, he wants to start chaotic trade wars, he isn't upholding NATO, he's endangering the North Atlantic Hegemony with his jingoism, he's rude and senile. for some of these people its politics qua management, and thus their objections are of managerial competence, merit, risk management, risking our investments without enhancing and maintaining the pro-trade, forever war capitalist consensus. for this sub-class it's all tactical to them, all skill points and saving throws, and they know that running an empire is serious fun as much as serious business, and they cling to all the cruddy blood soaked rituals and culture war agrievances that they've acculturated like a bombing of medals since they were small children. thus they disdain Trump only so long as he seems like a losing bet, whereas all is forgiven whenever he's seen to be in a position to deliver the goods and delivers on a victory, then go back to disdaining his unprofessionalism as soon as they see the pall of loss in it.

Haley might be able to appeal across the capitalist divide, both to the Executive Class and the Venture Bros, closely linked but not reducible to Silicon valley. these are your whales, your Thiels and Musks. your Disrupters, your Uber's running at a loss for 10 years in a row but it's fine cause both you and the banks know in another ten years you're going to corner the market and set rates as high as you want. Some would surely flock to Haley too, if only because by getting in on the ground floor they can fill her apparatus and push their own industry's pet policies.

But the Disrupters know that capitalism can't just be steady state risk aversion: capital needs a continuous stream of primitive accumulation, and that means buying up companies and countries and ecosystems and legal systems and auctioning them off for scrap. capitalism is a hunger ghost which eats and eats and only gets emptier, and they don't want their priests to be steady state generals guarding the outposts, they want the sons of Crassus invading Persia.

likewise, I'm not sure Haley is the first choice of a majority of the Executives either. a lot of these people are basically neurotic petite bourgeoisie administrators and executive producers, world travelers, proud of their cosmopolitan tastes, proud of the globe spanning reach of their corporations and by extension themselves. they occupy a racist and imperialist and white supremacist position to be sure, but they're simultaneously very anxious to be seen working and socializing with the rich and the famous, and this includes a very limited but very real need to be surrounded by diversity, almost to show that they aren't threatened by it the way more openly white supremacists can be mocked for their evident fear. Thus the very ones likely to be charmed by Haley's child of immigrants story are the ones likely to feel awkward if she presents as too anti gay, or too anti abortion, or generally too politically incorrect. the substance of the policies does not matter, it is merely a question of appearances. But that means Haley might be more limited when it comes to going after the hot button issues where large parts of the base are libidnally invested. That calculus might be fine if Hailey has made it to the general election and is facing off against just Harris, or just Vance, or just Trump, or just Biden. But in a six or seven way race, be it FPTP or RCV or a proportionally representative legislature, I think she's going to struggle for Oxygen. And once she's struggling, all those enthusiastic Executives who for whatever twist of their personal nerosies prefer her over someone like Newsom or Harris or Johnson are likely to show themselves for what they are: Utterly without loyalty, ready to stop and drop at their first sign of a bad investment and switch to whoever seems to be pulling ahead.

(Trump by the way himself fits this cosmopolitan mold; see his love of Broadway, his eagerness to be charmed by celebrities and TV hosts and handsome generals, indulgent in the double fascist poles (I forget who said this, maybe Eco?) of hyper cruelty and hyper sentimentality, talking up one's wealth and power and popularity and prestige and pleasure and drama. See above all his delight in saying Caitlyn Jenner can use whatever bathroom she wants at the White House.)

..

interesting, my own thinking is that a lot of self described socialists are pissed at AOC cause of how hard she's capitulated on Gaza and foreign policy in general and willingness to be a progressive face for a hard right party. what's so frustrating is that despite utterly selling out to the party on Gaza, AOC's radical background makes her toxic to Newsome/Clinton/Harris voters. it's a lose-lose strategy. thus I would expect a small but dedicated block of leftists refusing to vote for her in favor of PSL, Socialist Alternative, Green, Cornel West, or not vote at all.

to be clear, this isn't to say she wouldn't get a lot of votes, I just think her base wouldnt be nearly as united as she'd need it to be to crack a plurality.

Walz and Farmer-Labor on the other hand could probably get a lot of older Bernie Sanders voters and especially North East to Midwest Union voters without needing to paint himself as Left wing was AOC. she's kind of painted herself into a corner by getting elected with the DSA and positioning herself as a very morally driven, multi-racial socialist, but then so utterly caving on imperialism. precisely because Walz never claimed a thoroughgoing Left wing identity he would not be seen as failing relative to his own standards. He doesn't alienate his own base while not offending Newsom voters.

My guess is then that Walz would probably get a plurality, unless Haley voters broke hard for Johnson or Vance (personally I don't see why both Johnson and Vance would run here at all though, untill becoming Speaker he's been very ideologically close to Trump, Vance, and the Freedom Caucus, governing cautiously mainly because of his razor thin majority. Their main difference is demeanor, with Johnson having only recently been a backbencher from a hyper conservative strain of evangelicalism close to the Duggers and Quiverfulls whom a lot of the country sees as weird whenever focusing on them, whereas Vance was himself a Venture Bro with more of a MAGA oriented base, which especially since Biden took office has become less of a monolith, become less male, less white, less elderly, with sizeable majorities among white women and growing margins with men of color and younger voters and working class voters and immigrants. I don't think Johnson could have built the Trump Vance coalition. Maybe Vance himself could, but I think he'd be hard pressed to do it with someone like Walz eating into those groups more than Harris could have.

I feel I should include a disclaimer that I do not like Walz much myself; I voted PSL this year and among these candidates would begrudgingly rank AOC first, Walz a distant second, Newsom and Haley tied for third and Johnson and Vance tied for last.