THE DESANTIS COMEBACK IS UNDERWAY
An attack on one member of the Gang of 500 is an attack on all of the other 499.
To wit:
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That thing you smell in your home or office air this morning goes by the name “Ronmentum!”
There’s a thing in politics called the virtuous cycle, that applies to candidates for office who need to raise money and move towards electoral victory.
The paradigm for success is to get the virtuous cycle going by daisy chaining along these lines: Get some good press coverage, which leads to raising money, which leads to more good press coverage, which leads to rising poll numbers, which leads to more good press stories, which leads to raising even more money, which leads to etc etc etc.
The opposite of the virtuous cycle is the wicked cycle, which, of course goes like this: get some bad press, see your poll numbers decline, see your fundraising dry up and donors trashing you in the press, which leads to more bad stories and lower poll numbers.
Getting the virtuous cycle going is hard to do for most candidates; fighting your way out of the wicked cycle and to the virtuous one is triply challenging.
Ron DeSantis had the virtuous cycle going for many months, until Alvin Bragg, Donald Trump, and DeSantis himself (unwittingly) conspired in a flash to turn virtue into wicked.
There is zero denying that Team DeSantis has had a run of putrid press coverage and polling, but here are the reasons to think that the ship will be righted:
1. DeSantis’ various political accounts are already pre-stuffed, so he isn’t in danger of going broke. In other words, the Sunshine State topper has a circuit breaker for the wicked cycle – what former Texas Phil Gramm called “the most reliable friend you can have in American politics – ready money.”
2. Despite a few prominent on-the-record donor defections, there is still every reason to believe that DeSantis will be a triple threat when it comes to campaign money when he announces, with a capacity to raise grassroots, bundled, and Super PAC money cash that no one but Trump can come close to matching.
3. The official DeSantis Super PAC has the potential to be the best, most efficient, and most effective Super PAC in Republican presidential history. It is staffed by skilled pros, who have studied how Super PACs have gone south in the past, and plan to focus on functions beyond expensive TV spots.
4. Team DeSantis doesn’t need to overcome Trump’s lead in every state or nationally; they just need to leverage their advantages in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada to produce some Big Mo early next year.
5. DeSantis remains the only game in town for the Never Again Trump wing of the party. Even the staunchest Haley, Scott, etal. backers know their horse has no chance without King Kong and Godzilla destroying each other first.
6. In the end, the press wants a competitive race to cover and (mostly) doesn’t want Trump to win.
Beyond those quasi-evergreen advantages, in the current news cycle, Team DeSantis got its act together. Realizing that their Trump counterparts had been putting deadly turtle after turtle on various fence posts, the challenger’s posse got busy on various fronts, in a concerted way to turn the page, change the narrative, flip the script, and turn David back into Godzilla:
1. They made sure that the clips from the Guv’s South Carolina jaunt were solid:
2. They gave the New York Times the exclusive on a long list of DeSantis hires, including and especially in the early voting states, which had at least five positive effects:
a. Curried favor with the Times, a paper which wants Trump to lose but had been doing the master of Mar-a-Lago’s bidding of late by trashing DeSantis.
b. You might not have heard of Sophie Crowell, David Polyansky, Tyler Campbell, Ethan Zorfas, and Michael Mulé, but those names mean a lot to political sophisticates, meant to illustrate that the Good Ship DeSantis is the place to be, not a sinking dinghy.
c. Took the edge off of the recent NBC News report that DeSantis was planning to defy history and win the nomination without winning in the first four states by demonstrating a commitment to hiring top talent in the #fitn contests.
d. Showed that they can compete right now, head to head, with Team Trump for scarce assets.
e. Silenced the whisper campaign that maybe DeSantis won’t run after all for 2024.
You should read the whole Times story, but this is my favorite paragraph, with emphasis added:
Mr. DeSantis has not yet declared his bid, but a pro-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, has acted as something of a campaign-in-waiting, hiring staff members and responding to regular attacks from former President Donald J. Trump. Almost as significantly, it has engaged with mainstream news organizations that Mr. DeSantis instinctively shuns.
I love that the Times said, without apparent irony or self-consciousness, that the willingness of the staff at the Super PAC to answer the paper’s texts, emails, and calls, was “almost” as important as the hiring of key staff.
But, seriously, don’t underestimate this factor. Part of why the press corps has so rapidly turned on DeSantis is that most political reporters (let alone news executives in Gotham City and on the Potomac) don’t know him – and unfamiliarity breeds contempt. Add in his media bashing and the failure of his government or campaign team to play ball on the most basic of functions with the press, and you’ve got a textbook recipe for a poisonous environment. Most reporters are like dogs; give them a few scratches on the tummy and a tasty treat and they are pacified. And will lick your face.
3. With exquisite timing (and by sheer coincidence) that other major political news organ of the “FAKE NEWS” – the Washington Post – had its own favorable-to-DeSantis story about the Super PAC, including this:
Activists at 27 universities will soon begin meeting twice a month to organize their peers under the banner of Students for DeSantis. Office space supporting the Florida governor’s presidential ambitions will open in each of the early-voting states. And names have already been gathered by clipboard in Iowa to launch a door-knocking army…
Never Back Down also plans to continue a relatively recent practice of spending unlimited donations from wealthy donors on donor prospecting to raise much smaller increments of money that can be directly controlled by the candidate. Super PACs now routinely send out digital ads soliciting emails and donations, with links that go directly to the candidates’ campaign accounts. Never Back Down, even before the DeSantis campaign exists, has been raising small-dollar donations for an account that is effectively being held in escrow until the Florida governor joins the race. The fruits of that effort won’t be clear until midyear, when the committee is required to report to the Federal Election Commission….
Never Back Down could receive a transfer of the more than $85 million that DeSantis has in a state fundraising account if he becomes a candidate. In addition to that financial cushion, the super PAC has announced already bringing in $30 million in its first weeks of existence, raising the prospect of a record-breaking outside operation for a GOP primary effort that could grow into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
DeSantis’s longtime fundraiser, Heather Barker, who served as a senior adviser to his reelection campaign last year, will raise money for the super PAC, according to people familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss staffing. The move reflects Barker’s experience with major donors, these people said, while also signaling the prominent role the outside spending vehicle is expected to play in DeSantis’s operation.
Does this sound to you like a David operation or a growling, snarling, growing, vibrant Godzilla?
Team DeSantis, via the Washington Post, makes the point quite clearly.
And all the on-the-record quotes from Team DeSantis are making my head swim!
4. So the conservative media doesn’t feel left out, Team DeSantis also planted this exclusive with the Daily Caller:
The PAC supporting Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ potential 2024 presidential bid will send out hundreds of thousands of its first mailers in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, explaining why he should be the next president, the Daily Caller has learned.
The five-page Never Back Down PAC mailer will hit mailboxes Thursday, as DeSantis has been traveling the U.S. speaking at different events. Although the mailer does not mention a possible 2024 presidential bid, it touts all of what the PAC believes are DeSantis’ main accomplishments and details his background….
Here’s one part of the mailer:
You can read/see the whole thing here.
5. Then there was this press release from the Super PAC:
Like the Times, Post, and Daily Caller stories, this release is meant to demonstrate movement, activity, reach, and youthful vigor, all intended to compete with and best Trump.
Now, to be sure, this is not a purely virtuous news cycle for Team DeSantis, as their wicked rivals in South Florida had a pretty good day on several fronts.
Along with more endorsements from Florida House members for King Kong, there was this item from yesterday’s Politico Playbook that was the talk of the whole political world on Wednesday, in part because it amplified the “DeSantis has the interpersonal skills of a damp washcloth” meme:
Both Axios and CNN did second-day swipes at the failure of the DC trip.
Then there were New Hampshire and South Carolina polls that show DeSantis has his work cut out for him.
Here is the Granite State Poll:
And here is a South Carolina survey that was done by some Trump chums, but still:
On the donor front, Puck continued its gossipy obsession with saying DeSantis’ sky is falling with donors over abortion, while Bloomberg had this:
DeSantis has yet to officially enter the race, and his political allies have only just begun efforts to undermine Trump’s popularity among Republican voters. Nevertheless, there is a sense among some large GOP donors that the Florida governor has already peaked, and that he doesn’t have whatever it takes to knock off Trump, who has effectively dominated Republican politics for a decade….
DeSantis’s staff and allies recognize that he’s struggling, according to people familiar with the matter, and have sought in particular to improve his encounters with ordinary voters. He spent close to an hour working the room at a dinner in New Hampshire on Friday, for example — though he was surrounded by a coterie of aides and security guards who closely monitored his interactions….
One major GOP donor said that he was “flabbergasted” by the GOP field so far and uncommitted to a candidate. He said there’s no way he’d support Trump, that he would take a long time to decide and that he might sit out the primary entirely.
But another major donor, who has previously supported Trump but has been undecided so far, said the former president’s indictment may lead to him gaining the donor’s backing. This donor has publicly criticized Trump in recent months but has concluded that GOP voters are so angry about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution that even Republicans who aren’t Trump fans will be forced to get behind him.
A third donor said he’s worried the indictment will boost Trump and rally GOP voters around him, snuffing out his opponents’ efforts even before they can emerge.
And the Washington Post also has an overview “DeSantis in DeTrouble” piece, which includes:
Republican megadonor Ken Langone is eager to support Ron DeSantis for president in 2024. But he has some concerns about the Florida governor as he prepares to enter the race.
Langone didn’t like that DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban and wants him to moderate his stance on the issue. It wouldn’t hurt for DeSantis to “be a little more conciliatory” in his demeanor, he suggested. And Langone worries about the resurgence of former president Donald Trump, who Langone previously backed but argues can’t win another general election.
“It scares the hell out of me,” he said of Trump’s growing dominance in the polls….
Some Republicans traced DeSantis’s struggle to lock down endorsements in part to his insularity and said he should have done more to cultivate relationships. One person in DeSantis’s orbit said a dearth of warm interactions — even with staff and traditional allies — has hurt him with endorsements, lawmakers and donors. “He doesn’t like talking to people, and it’s showing,” said this person, who is a vocal supporter of DeSantis….
Trump and his advisers have been taken aback by how DeSantis has let some of the most scorching attacks go unchallenged. “He’s not ready for the bright lights,” Trump has repeatedly said, according to a close adviser….
“He’s not practiced in dealing with real opposition,” said Mac Stipanovich, a former lobbyist and Republican operative in Florida who has backed Democrats in recent years and criticized both DeSantis and Trump.
One prominent Republican who does not support Trump was highly critical of the prison comment, noting that suburban moms and others from Middle America whose support is important in elections go to Disney World. “What is wrong with you?” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be more candid.
Also, I am hearing from lots of folks in Florida that the local news coverage of DeSantis and conditions in the state has been quite negative lately, including the focus on long gas lines, shortages, and closed filling stations, as well as his battle with Disney and a new brewing controversy over an attempt by the legislature to keep the details of DeSantis’ travel a secret.
So, the dueling “virtuous” and “wicked” storylines will continue for the Sunshine State topper, to be sure.
But Team DeSantis is now fighting back harder, which will be noticed in Mar-a-Lago.
And still to come in the next few days: we have Trump hosting a dinner with members of Congress; a Trump Florida public event; DeSantis back in DC, some meta campaign events out of state and his overseas trip.
If DeSantis and his folks keep this up, by next Tuesday we will be back to “King King versus Godzilla,” which is, in effect, their urgent/immediate goal.
To be continued…..
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THE CLIFFHANGERS HANG
1. Joe Biden plans to run for president!
Top donors to President Biden have received a last-minute invitation to travel to Washington at the end of next week to see Mr. Biden as he gears up for a 2024 campaign, according to more than a half-dozen people who have been invited to or briefed on the event.
Invitations are going out to some of the biggest donors and bundlers for Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign — those who donated or raised at least $1 million, according to one person. The initial round of invitations is being made by phone instead of email.
The event, which is not a fund-raiser, is seen as an effort to rally donors before what is expected to be an expensive 2024 run….
Some of the details of the donor event appear to still be coming together, but it is expected to include a meeting on Friday evening with Mr. Biden outside the White House, multiple people said. There might also be briefings from some of Mr. Biden’s top strategists on Saturday.
One person familiar with the event described it as something of an outstretched hand after a relatively long drought of interactions between Mr. Biden’s world and some of its donors.
Two governors who have previously been top Democratic fund-raisers, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Phil Murphy of New Jersey, have also been invited because of their past fund-raising, according to two people briefed on the event. Both have been seen as potential candidates in 2024 if Mr. Biden decides not to run.
HALPERINS SAYS: He can announce he is running and not end up the nominee, as my sources continue to suggest.
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2. The Supreme Court delays until Friday a decision on the abortion pill, per the Associated Press:
The Supreme Court is leaving women’s access to a widely used abortion pill untouched until at least Friday, while the justices consider whether to allow restrictions on the drug mifepristone to take effect.
The court is dealing with a new abortion controversy less than a year after its conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.
At stake now is whether to allow restrictions on mifepristone ordered by a lower court to take effect while a legal challenge to the medication’s Food and Drug Administration approval continues.
HALPERINS SAYS: Spideysense says the eventual SCOTUS announcement is going to be less place-holding and administrative and more reflective of the High Court’s deep divisions over this whole issue.
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3. Kevin McCarthy has a long road ahead on the debt ceiling face off.
Wednesday, the Speaker released his plan to combine spending restraint with about a year’s worth of debt ceiling relief. And/but Joe Biden rejected that plan and any linkage to raising the ceiling.
If McCarthy can’t get 218 votes for his plan, he loses all leverage and heaven knows what happens after that.
If he can get the votes, it will certainly give him some leverage. But he needs enough leverage to
a. Get the media to switch the framing, as in, One party wants to restrain spending and raise the debt ceiling – and one party just wants to raise the ceiling and Senator Joe Biden in the past has refused to raise the debt ceiling and has supported the kind of linkage McCarthy now advocates. (As Karl Rove lays out….)
b. Get the Democrats to the negotiating table.
If all that happens, then McCarthy has to reach a deal with Biden, Schumer, and McConnell that he can pass through the House with enough Republican votes to avoid losing his job.
HALPERINS SAYS: First things first; let’s see if McCarthy & Co. can “Braveheart” their way to 218.
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4. RFK all the way….
If you dismiss the notion that Robert Kennedy’s campaign for the Democratic nomination can cause as much harm to Joe Biden as Pat Buchanan did to Bush 41 in 1992 (about which Politico and most of the Dominant Media is skeptical) , you need to read two things:
A. This national poll in USA Today:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launches his unlikely bid for the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday with the support of 14% of voters who backed President Joe Biden in 2020, an exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds.
That is surprising strength for a candidate who has a famous political name but is now known mostly as the champion of a debunked conspiracy theory blaming childhood vaccines for autism….
Kennedy drew the support of 33% of Biden voters who disapprove of the job he is doing as president and 35% of those who say his policies in the White House have been "too liberal." The challenger's appeal was strongest among self-identified conservatives, younger voters and those who don't have a college degree.
B. Michael Graham’s essential reading NH Journal story about Kennedy’s Wednesday Boston announcement, some of which I excerpt here (but read it all; it is brilliant):
Toward the end of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s bravura performance in a ballroom at the Boston Park Plaza Wednesday, an alarm bell sounded and a robotic female voice announced “a report of an emergency in this building.” The crowd on hand to hear Kennedy formally declare his candidacy, some 2,000 strong, was instructed to evacuate.
After a moment of confusion, RFK, Jr. told the crowd he’d been informed that there was no emergency and he was going to press on with his speech. The bell sounded again and the demanding, automated voice repeated the call to evacuate.
“Nice try,” Kennedy quipped. He wasn’t going anywhere.
That was the message Kennedy and his team came to Boston to deliver: Joe Biden may want to ignore him, and some Democrats — including in his own family — may be embarrassed by him, and the media may hate him. But RFK, Jr. is going to run for president, and and he’s going to run like he means it.
Because he does.
Watching him deliver a smart, carefully calibrated speech — the word “vaccine” never crossed his lips — a scene from the movie Rocky came to mind. After Rocky landed some serious blows, Apollo Creed’s trainer tells the champ who’s still not taking the challenger seriously, “He doesn’t know it’s supposed to be a show. He thinks it’s a damn fight!”
Kennedy embraced the longshot nature of his candidacy, comparing his 2024 quest to the campaign his father was running in 1968 before an assassin’s bullet brought it to an end. In RFK, Jr’s telling, the situation his father faced was much like his today: running against an incumbent Democrat in the White House, a time of “unprecedented polarization,” and “the liberal press were all against him.”
Kennedy’s campaign isn’t shy about wrapping him in the Camelot history of his political family. The setting for his announcement — an old-school Boston ballroom with chandeliers overhead and patriotic bunting on the balconies, and a brass band playing Aaron Copeland — was straight out of a Ken Burns documentary. And just to make sure the point wasn’t missed, family photos of RFK, Jr. and his famous forebears flashed on flat-panel TV screens at the front of the room.
Kennedy’s political message was an NPR version of Bernie Sanders’ left-wing economic populism, but with a dollop of talk-radio conspiracy theory thrown in. While Liz Warren Democrats rail against Big Business, Big Pharma, etc., RFK, Jr. adds his opposition to “the corrupt merger of state and corporate power….”
When he “let loose” on lockdowns, denouncing public health officials for a failed policy and decrying the damage they inflicted on small businesses and low-income communities, Kennedy sounded like a caller to a conservative radio talk show.
When he attacked the “corporate media” and its “lies,” he sounded like a talk radio host.
“The media is at its lowest point because we know the media lies to us — everybody knows that,” Kennedy said to cheers — a scene that could have come straight out of a Trump rally. “And when the media and the corporate media and the corporate-captive government see other voices of truth, they have to brand those misinformation….
It shouldn’t be a surprise. In the world of politics, name ID plus money plus issues that energize your base is considered a recipe for a strong campaign, and Kennedy has all three.
HALPERINS SAYS: Watch two venues to see where this goes – can Kennedy make hay in New Hampshire and can he lure Joe Biden into debating him?
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5. CBS News and the Wall Street Journal reported first on an IRS whistleblower who is suggesting Hunter Biden has gotten special treatment in the tax investigation.
To its credit, the Washington Post followed up on this potential BFD:
An IRS agent who has been overseeing a lengthy, ongoing case involving Hunter Biden’s tax returns is seeking whistleblower protection to testify to Congress about what he asserts is political interference and improper handling of the case by the Biden administration.
A lawyer for the unnamed IRS criminal supervisory special agent sent a letter to Congress this week saying the agent would like to give information to lawmakers that substantiates his allegations of undue influence.
“Despite serious risks of retaliation, my client is offering to provide you with information necessary to exercise your constitutional oversight function and wishes to make the disclosures in a non-partisan manner to the leadership of the relevant committees on both sides of the political aisle,” the attorney, Mark D. Lytle, wrote to top lawmakers on several House and Senate committees.
HALPERINS SAYS: Why the Hunter probe has taken so long, and if there will be an indictment, a deal, or a declination to prosecute before the presidential campaign heats up are very big and meaningful mysteries. And while this IRS thing is potentially a major deal, don’t skip Miranda Devine’s column, that also includes this “watch this space” development:
Take the bombshell this week from former acting CIA Director Mike Morell.
In sworn interview, Morell has admitted it was Joe Biden’s presidential campaign that prompted the infamous letter in which Morell and 50 fellow former intelligence officials falsely claimed that material from Hunter Biden’s laptop published by The Post before the 2020 election was Russian disinformation, sources in the House Judiciary Committee have confirmed.
Tony Blinken, now secretary of state, was the Biden-campaign foreign-affairs adviser who urgently phoned Morell in October 2020 to suggest the laptop was a Russian plant.
“We can prove that the entire purpose of this letter at the outset was to influence a presidential election with some of the most senior people who have ever been in our intelligence community using the imprimatur of their security clearances to pave the way for Joe Biden’s presidency,” Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz told Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast this week.
HALPERINS SAYS: Hmmmmmmm……
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6. Heaven on earth, per Variety:
Goodbye, Tanya — Belinda’s back!
Natasha Rothwell will return to “The White Lotus” for Season 3, Variety has learned from multiple sources close to the production.
Rothwell was a fan favorite in Season 1 as spa manager Belinda Lindsey, who was strung along by wealthy resort guest Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge) with promises of an investment to open her own practice. Plot and character details remain under wraps for the new season, but creator Mike White teased after the Season 2 finale that he envisions “a satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality” — potentially aligning with Belinda’s wellness background.
HALPERINS SAYS: Can’t wait!
****
EXCUSE THE TYPOS!!!
I’M LATE, I’M LATE…FOR A VERY IMPORTANT DATE…..
