Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley met in a Republican debate on Wednesday night in Des Moines, Iowa. The Iowa caucuses will be held on Monday, and both of them are, nominally, running in that race, which will be won by Donald Trump.

The running is very nominal. Haley has not campaigned heavily in Iowa; she’s hoping that a decent second-place showing in New Hampshire on Jan. 23, which is not out of the question, will maybe lead to momentum in her home state of South Carolina, where she currently trails Trump by “only” 30 points, and that from there [waving hands vaguely] … hmm, let’s say his “inevitability” is “shaken,” yada yada yada, maybe he gets convicted in one felony trial or another, something like that. It’s a long shot, and in reality the best explanation for why Haley is still in the race is that outlasting DeSantis will put her in a good position to win the next primary that Trump isn’t involved in. If she really wanted to win this one, she’d be attacking Trump, and when invited to do so by CNN’s moderators on Wednesday, she answered that “the next president needs to have moral clarity.” Yeah, that’s not going to do it with the Republican primary electorate.

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