From Yogi Berra to Ron DeSantis
When you come to a fork in the road, take it….because the future ain’t what it used to be….
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Ron DeSantis could still end up the Republican nominee for president next year, but as the Vermont farmer said when asked by the city slicker for driving directions from his property to Boston, “Wouldn’t staaat from here.”
If Tuesday wasn’t necessarily the worst day of the Sunshine State topper’s meta campaign for the White House, it wasn’t the very best news cycle for him either.
Every political reporter, columnist, and pundit fancies herself a mini-David Plouffe, so there are all sorts of journalistic notions for what ails RDS and what he should be doing differently to shift his battle with the Master of Mar-a-Lago back to “King Kong versus Godzilla” from where it stands now – “David versus Goliath,” with DeSantis as an undermatched slingshot-less David who is the decided underdog for good reason(s).
How do the events of the last twenty-four hours illustrate the challenges Team DeSantis face?
Obviously, let’s have the political strategist Yogi Berra frame our discussion.
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You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there….
The politico-media expectation was that Team DeSantis would not send its lad to meet with a covey of members of Congress in DC on Tuesday without having secretly pre-cooked a batch of endorsements to trot out.
That’s not the way it worked out.
Not only did Trump score more Hill backing around the meeting than DeSantis did, but the essential reading Politico write up of the confab turned it all into a peg to reinforce Trump’s current dominance:
Many congressional Republicans are eager for a Donald Trump alternative in 2024. Yet even with Ron DeSantis right in front of them, few are committing early to Trump’s chief rival for the GOP nomination.
The Florida governor and former House member returned to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for the start of a prolonged courtship with his party’s lawmakers — outreach he’ll need to step up if he hopes to topple Trump in a presidential primary. But among the nine Republicans who are formally co-hosting DeSantis’ congressional meet-and-greet, only three so far are willing to call it an endorsement….
[E]ven after he hobnobbed with members and staff in a cloistered upstairs room at the Heritage Foundation on Pennsylvania Avenue, few who left the room were willing to offer an endorsement. Several tried to downplay their attendance, saying they went because the governor was a former colleague and they wanted to say hello.
Despite the desire for new blood at the top of the ticket, Hill Republicans still prioritize avoiding Trump’s anger. And the general hesitancy to back DeSantis, who still has not officially declared his intent to run, underscores a persistent reality in GOP politics that he will have to confront: Crossing the former president remains a risky endeavor. Trump and his team are paying close attention to which members have — or have not — backed his campaign, and have been strategically rolling out endorsements from inside the Capitol in recent weeks….
“I think Trump will clean them up. I think the polls are pretty indicative of where most would be. Despite Trump’s challenges, he was the original,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who hasn’t endorsed a presidential candidate.
A second (!) Politico story on the same topic was, if anything, more brutal:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis values being in control. Presidential candidate-in-waiting DeSantis is losing it.
As he trekked to the nation’s capital to demonstrate strength with the Washington establishment on Tuesday — and before he even set foot in the district — several members of his state’s congressional delegation announced support instead for former President Donald Trump’s White House comeback bid.
It was the latest indication of the early shine dulling on a candidate initially heralded by Republicans who don’t want Trump to be their party’s 2024 nominee — and more proof of Trump’s indictment bolstering his standing in the GOP field…..
“He looks like a governor. He peaked months ago,” said one Republican ex-politician from New York who is backing Trump but likes DeSantis and was granted anonymity to speak freely about the dynamics of the race. “I don’t think the party moves forward until we get through [Trump’s] comeback chances. The road to DeSantis 2028 goes through Trump 2024.”
The person added, “Redemption today, DeSantis tomorrow.”
The New York Times’ version has a similar feel and tone:
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Tuesday made a rare return trip to Washington, where he served in the House before his run for governor, to mingle with about a dozen Republican lawmakers.
But his journey to Capitol Hill failed to spark much momentum in his expected presidential bid among Republicans in Congress, an important group for White House aspirants….
Mr. Trump, the front-runner in the race, who opened his campaign five months ago, has collected 45 endorsements from House Republicans, including seven from Florida. Mr. Trump’s team announced three of those Florida Republican endorsements — Brian Mast, John Rutherford and Greg Stuebe — in the 24 hours before Mr. DeSantis landed in Washington.
Representative Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican, attended the Tuesday event but said his presence shouldn’t be viewed as an endorsement but as an opportunity to discuss policy issues in different parts of the country.
Mr. Buck said he sat next to Mr. DeSantis when both were members of the House Judiciary Committee and was “happy to be supportive in a general way.”
“Most of us who are attending are not publicly supporting him — I have gone to events for others and will continue to do that,” Mr. Buck said. “It’s just an opportunity for Ron to be in town and maybe raise his profile a little bit.”
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Nobody goes there any more – it’s too crowded….
DeSantis did pick up one endorsement Tuesday, from his former secretary of state, Florida freshwoman Rep. Laurel Lee, but Trump picked up more, including this one, which the media seized on as particularly embarrassing for RDS:
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I always thought the record would stand until it was broken….
Henry Olsen is part of the columnizing crowd which currently seeks to get ahead of (and turn on its head) the conventional wisdom to argue that DeSantis has a path to victory over his Florida constituent.
Citing some private polling he obtained exclusively, here is the data that Olsen cites under the headline, “This New Hampshire poll shows DeSantis’s path to defeating Trump”:
The results show that Trump leads the field with 51 percent of the vote when facing many potential contenders, with his top rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, winning 18 percent and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu coming in third at 10 percent. But when limited to a one-on-one race with DeSantis, Trump’s lead shrinks to 20 points, or 53 percent to 33 percent with the remainder undecided.
To be sure, there is other data in the survey that Olsen marshals to make his case, but a poll that shows Trump over 50 in a mythical two-way????!!!
Thin gruel, indeed….
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It ain't over till it's over….
Like Olsen, the very smart Rich Lowry joins in with his own similar piece, with the headline, “Don’t count DeSantis out — he may yet take down Trump.”
Here are the “strongest” portions of Lowry’s argument (a/k/a more thin gruel):
DeSantis is a strong second in most states and is well-liked in crucial Iowa.
If the Bragg bump wears off over time and DeSantis gets a bump from his announcement — neither is inevitable, but neither is far-fetched, either — it will look like a very competitive race at the top of the field.
Besides the latest polling, much of the new conventional wisdom about DeSantis is driven by the assumptions he will never attack Trump and he will be a poor campaigner.
If either is true, he won’t be the nominee….
Does the Bragg indictment — and possible subsequent indictments — continue to buoy Trump or eventually weigh him down?
Who else gets in the race?
How vulnerable is the former president to an electability critique?
Who wins and loses the first debate in August?
Does someone else in the field pop?
If Mike Pence gets in, how much traction does he get in Iowa?
And so on. This is why we have primary campaigns, and they always hold surprises.
What we have definitely learned the last couple months is that Donald Trump isn’t going to fade away.
He is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee a third time in a row, and if he is going to be stopped someone is going to have to go out and affirmatively beat him.
Can DeSantis — or in the right circumstances someone else — do that?
It’s an enormous task, but the governor shouldn’t be counted out before he’s in.
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We made too many wrong mistakes….
In announcing the Lee endorsement, the DeSantis Super PAC made a common copy-and-paste error, which, on one level, is no big deal.
But when a (meta) campaign is going bad, political journalists and donors turn every error into a version of “if he/she can’t do X, how can he/she run the country?” or, in this case, “How can he beat King Kong?”
Here is the error:
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It gets late early out here….
Another smarty righty columnist, Byron York, stays more on the conventional wisdom bandwagon, with a column that reflects what is now, more than ever, the consensus view in the peanut gallery:
What is the hardest job in politics? Without doubt, at this moment, the hardest job in politics is running against Donald Trump in a Republican presidential primary.
Why is it so hard? Because if you want to appeal to the broad majority of Republican voters, you will have to say that Trump was a great president, that you strongly support his policies and would like to see them return to the White House. And then you have to say: But it's time to move on. And then Trump himself says: What do you mean, move on? I'm the man who made those policies. And I'm right here. Vote for me.
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In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is….
In theory, Trump’s polling numbers with suburban voters and independents should allow DeSantis to make the fabled “electability” argument against Trump now. But stop what you are doing right this minute and read (via John Ellis) Dominic Cummings’ piece (one of the most essential 2024 reads of 2023).
Cummings makes the case I have made here a time or two: Trump is close to, at, or better than even money to win the presidential election, and there are plenty of variables/possibilities that could make him the clean favorite to beat the Democratic nominee.
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Yes, indeedy, there is a lot of time on the clock, anything can happen, a week is an eternity in politics, you never know, frontrunners fall all the time, and any other cliché you would like to add in here.
But Team Trump is obviously sitting on many more of its own pre-cooked congressional endorsements than DeSantis has already announced, with the Mar-a-Lago mavens just waiting to roll them out at places and times of their choosing.
Those who argued with me for months that Trump wasn’t really going to run or that he really didn’t have his heart in winning another term – I hope you all have come to your senses.
Lots could happen with both Trump and DeSantis in the coming weeks and months that could impact their nomination fortunes – but my mental list has more elements on it that would work to Goliath’s favor than David’s.
In a sea of uncertainty, one thing now seems clear: To beat Goliath, David needs to demonstrate he has another gear than he has shown so far.
And one thing is not clear: Does David in fact have that gear in him, to turn him from David back into Godzilla?
If DeSantis has not displayed said new gear by mid-summer and demonstrated that he is a reformer with results:
1. Panic will set in among the establishment (still steaming and head shaking over the new abortion law DeSantis signed).
2. The conventional wisdom that Trump is unstoppable will harden into a self-fulfilling prophecy as rock solid as a two-day-old donut coated in gold.
3. Tallahassee will be filled with more finger pointing than the Warriors’ locker room.
4. The search for another Republican who can stop Trump will go into overdrive.
5. Democratic plotting to ensure their nominee gets to run against Trump will continue apace (however misguided that scheme might be….).
6. There will be a lot of media and pol second guessing about the spring decisions made by Team DeSantis (such as rarely commenting to the press, putting surrogates out, or trying to shape the many profiles and investigative stories, such as this Washington Post look at his gubernatorial rise).
7. More Red elites, seeing that the Trump train is leaving the station, will hop on before it’s too late, with the doomed hope that Mr. Trump won’t have noticed the tardy nature of their boarding time.
I will say again: Trump’s nomination is not inevitable.
But DeSantis won’t beat him if he keeps having news cycles like this one.
To be continued….
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SUSPENSE LIFTED
* If you want to know the message Team Biden-Harris will deploy in both the legislative battles of 2023 and the expected reelect effort of 2024, it is all right here in this White House press release:
* Where will Governor DeSantis be from Friday onward? The New York Times tells us all (including Democratic and Trump bracketers):
Mr. DeSantis is set to return to the nation’s capital on Friday to address a conference for the conservative Heritage Foundation before traveling to Austin, Texas, for an event.
From there, he will travel abroad on a trade mission that the governor’s office has not publicly announced. The itinerary includes Tokyo, where he’s scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, before heading to Seoul, Tel Aviv and London, according to people with knowledge of the planning.
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SUSPENSE SUSTAINING
* What will the Supreme Court do about the abortion pill today?
* What will Chuck Schumer do about the Senator Feinstein situation?
* Can Speaker McCarthy get 218 votes for….something…anything…related to the debt ceiling?
* Is Chris Christie an undervalued stock and/but will he actually run?