The temptation to dunk on Ron DeSantis is, I confess, almost unbearable. The man is the walking definition of ‘insufferable.’ And it’s true that his presidential campaign is stuck in about the same place it was last year, polling in the low twenties about 30 points behind former President Donald Trump, despite the fact that Trump has since been found liable for sexual assault and arrested in both New York and Florida, and faces the imminent prospect of arrest in Washington DC and Georgia. But is DeSantis really in such a bad position?
Nicholas Nehames of the New York Times certainly thinks so. He’s assembled a bunch of DeSantis critics for sources. Here’s an example:
“DeSantis’s argument is electability,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who holds regular focus groups with G.O.P. voters. “But he is undermining the electability argument by running to Trump’s right. He is alienating college-educated, suburban voters who want to move past Trump,” as well as the independents he would need to beat Mr. Biden in a general election.
Ms. Longwell said Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to differentiate himself from Mr. Trump without directly criticizing him risked leaving the Florida governor without a natural constituency in the primaries.
“You cannot go around Trump,” she said. “You have to go through him.”
Longwell makes good points, but she doesn’t ask who has positioned themselves as the obvious alternative to Trump. It’s true that DeSantis is running 30 points behind Trump, but he’s running 15 points ahead of former vice-president Mike Pence who is in third place (six percent) in the RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls.. If Trump were to drop out or find himself in prison, how many of his supporters do you think would move to Pence?
As for the rest, none of them can boast that even one in twenty poll respondents select them in national surveys of the upcoming 2024 Republican primaries. The reason DeSantis is outpacing them is because of what he did right, which was win an historic landslide reelection in 2022 during what was otherwise a very disappointing night for the Republican Party.
Nehames is correct when he writes that DeSantis “has not shown that he is a natural campaigner” and Longwell is right when she says electability, not likability, is DeSantis’ calling card. But his electability argument remains intact. It’s the reason he’s alone in second place behind Trump.
To me, that’s sitting pretty. The flaw in what the critics are saying is that they believe anyone could compete with Trump for the hearts of Republican primary voters. They won’t give up on Trump until they feel compelled to, and nothing the other candidates can possibly do will change the odds of it happening.
On Thursday, Politico Magazine published an analysis of their own poll on this question. Conducted by Ipsos, the results predict a real and substantial cratering for Trump, even among Republicans, if he is convicted in either the New York or Florida trials. More than one in four Republicans said a conviction in either case would make them less likely to support Trump.
Clearly, what DeSantis needs is for Trump to get convicted of crimes before the disgraced ex-president can wrap up the nomination. DeSantis has positioned himself well to pick up the banner at that point.
Now, that doesn’t mean DeSantis has positioned himself well to win a general election contest against Joe Biden, but should we really be demanding miracles from the man? Who honestly thinks it’s possible to position oneself to collect up Trump’s supporters at the same time that you are making yourself more appealing to political moderates and swing voters?
To beat Biden, he first needs Trump to implode and then he needs a political environment extremely hostile to incumbents. Unfortunately, I think the odds of both things happening are pretty good. Despite his campaign’s flaws, DeSantis is the second most likely person in the country to be president in 2025. And isn’t that about where a presidential challenger wants to be at the start of a campaign against an incumbent president?
You might be right, but the thought of him & his creepy wife leading this country is truly disturbing.
Booman, that is what you call an ugly truth…and yet, there it is.
I’m waiting for the first in-depth Nixon/DeSantis comparison: both painfully awkward politicians with sharp minds, and a near bottomless willingness to embarrass themselves in the pursuit of punishing their opponents.
I think you are right that once Trump is in prison DeSantis will be able to wrap up the nomination. But I think he’s a terrible general election candidate, because Trump actually got independents to vote for him whereas it doesn’t feel like de Santis is interested in doing that. Also, he’s just a general creep and hates people and is a terrible campaigner with super think skin. It will be a piece of cake to run attack ads. Biden has presided over a very strong economy and apart from his age, there are no real scandals. I think it will be an election like 2012 in this scenario.
I doubt he will ever go to prison. Still I cheer for it.
I think more than one in eight survey respondents are either lying to pollsters, or they’re lying to themselves and will change their mind and stick with Trump by the time convictions come. And let’s not forget another crucial factor: Trump is not going quietly into that goodnight if he gets knocked out of contention, and it’s already beyond clear that he has a deep resentment toward Desantis personally. But I don’t think it’ll come to even that. Trump would actually run from prison in the event, and is evidently working very hard (for Trump) to prepare his supporters for a conviction.
But he’s not going to prison. He may be convicted–almost certainly will be, although we may have to wait a while for that–but the very most that will happen to him is some form of home confinement. No US president is going to spend time inside a prison cell, even minimum security. Or no Republican will, anyway. Accountability is for Democrats.
What worries me more about Desantis is his youth. The odds of him winning a future presidential primary are quite good, I think.
So DeSantis is in a good position if the criminal justice system acts with celerity? When does that happen? Especially as we know Trump’s lawyers will do everything they can to delay the trial. His entire legal strategy is to get re-elected.
Even Rupert is pulling the plug on Meatball Ron. This fucker is Scott Walker but somehow less charasmatic.