Nikki Haley’s Last Dance (Or, the Hillary Clinton of It All)

The Haleyites were giddy: dancing, downing glasses of white wine, sashaying in sassy dresses, performatively smooching a Nikki Haley bobblehead doll for selfies. It was the Saturday night of the South Carolina primary, 10 days before Super Tuesday, but a distinct trace of let-’er-rip fatalism was already in the air as election returns trickled in over CNN on a jumbo screen. In the raucous crowd at the event for “Women for Nikki,” a core group of Haley supporters and advisers, Bhavna Vasudeva, a 56-year-old Indian American broker who has known...