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The Ron DeSantis Bubble Deflates
You know it's hard out there for a Florida governor...
Remember six months ago? The Republican Party had just massively underperformed in the midterm elections, and a lot of GOP power brokers were grousing that the blame lay with one Donald J. Trump. Ron DeSantis, on the other hand, romped to a 20-point re-election victory despite the occasional jab from Trump. This led many folks to believe that this time, Trump had finally met his match: a MAGA-style conservative who actually knew how to operate the levers of power.
In the half-year since then, Donald Trump launched a lackluster first phase of his presidential campaign. He was indicted in one state, will likely be indicted in another state and could be indicted by federal authorities. He's also still Donald Trump, a bigoted man-child who mismanaged crisis after crisis, fomented a violent uprising and is proposing far worse and more militaristic actions in his second term. DeSantis has launched a book and orchestrated (by conservative standards) a productive legislative session. He has learned how to say "woke" a lot. True, his foreign policy musings leave something to be desired, but there were reasons to understand why party elites might prefer him to Trump.
And yet, it's hard not to draw two conclusions: a) Trump is cleaning DeSantis's clock; and b) in doing so Trump is exposing all of DeSantis's myriad flaws as a presidential candidate. Trump is winning on three levels in his shadow primary against DeSantis. First, to the extent that polls matter this early in the race, Trump has widened the gap between himself and DeSantis since the start of 2023. Second, Trump has out-hustled and out-maneuvered DeSantis on endorsements from elected officials. FiveThirtyEight's Nathaniel Rakich recently weighed in on this:
Remember six months ago? The Republican Party had just massively underperformed in the midterm elections, and a lot of GOP power brokers were grousing that the blame lay with one Donald J. Trump. Ron DeSantis, on the other hand, romped to a 20-point re-election victory despite the occasional jab from Trump. This led many folks to believe that this time, Trump had finally met his match: a MAGA-style conservative who actually knew how to operate the levers of power.
In the half-year since then, Donald Trump launched a lackluster first phase of his presidential campaign. He was indicted in one state, will likely be indicted in another state and could be indicted by federal authorities. He's also still Donald Trump, a bigoted man-child who mismanaged crisis after crisis, fomented a violent uprising and is proposing far worse and more militaristic actions in his second term. DeSantis has launched a book and orchestrated (by conservative standards) a productive legislative session. He has learned how to say "woke" a lot. True, his foreign policy musings leave something to be desired, but there were reasons to understand why party elites might prefer him to Trump.
And yet, it's hard not to draw two conclusions: a) Trump is cleaning DeSantis's clock; and b) in doing so Trump is exposing all of DeSantis's myriad flaws as a presidential candidate. Trump is winning on three levels in his shadow primary against DeSantis. First, to the extent that polls matter this early in the race, Trump has widened the gap between himself and DeSantis since the start of 2023. Second, Trump has out-hustled and out-maneuvered DeSantis on endorsements from elected officials. FiveThirtyEight's Nathaniel Rakich recently weighed in on this:
more ... https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-ron-desantis-bubble-deflates
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