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DeSantis Will Drop Out Before Super Tuesday [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-08-16
Ron DeSantis, the ultra-conservative governor of Florida, is in a complete and undeniable state of free-fall. His donor base has gone from a gushing wall of water the size of Niagara Falls to the slow drip of a half-broken $10 one-cup coffee machine found in a room at a Super 8 motel. The more voters actually see him on camera, the further he actually loses their support. His campaign is stuck in a state of amnesia - one day they want the candidate to be the competent pro-business conservative governor of the libertarian-minded state of Florida - and the next morning, he wants to destroy the livelihoods of every transgender human being in the universe. But instead of capturing both lanes of the Republican electorate, he’s actually managed to make both sides hate his guts.
DeSantis isn’t even “prohibitively the 2nd place frontrunner" anymore, as I described him a couple of months ago. His meteoric fall-to-Earth (it is weird why we talk about someone’s “meteoric rise”, considering that meteors actually come down) has been faster than I could have even imagined. DeSantis has been trailing Trump by over 20 points since the month of April, but he had always maintained a respectable 25-30% support within the Republican electorate. This is no longer true. DeSantis is now quickly approaching numbers similar to that of Jeb Bush. In 2016, the first Republican debate was held on August 3, 2015; Jeb Bush’s performance in an average-of-polls conducted in the first half of July was 14.3%. As of today, a week out from the first 2024 debate, the RealClearPolitics average-of-polls shows DeSantis at 14.1. DeSantis has unceremoniously journeyed from being dubbed by Rupert Murdock’s New York Post as “Ron DeFuture” all the way down to being more irrelevant than “Jeb!”
“Please clap.” — Jeb Bush, Feb 2016
The polling situation gets even worse for DeSantis when you break down the loyalty of his voters versus the loyalty of Trump voters. When Republican voters were asked whether they would seriously consider changing their support over the course of the primary season, 75% of Trump voters said they were not considering anyone else. As for DeSantis, just 14% of his supporters said the same thing. At minimum, Trump already has 30-40% of the G.O.P. electorate completely locked in - before the first debate has even occurred. For DeSantis, even if we assume his support is 25%, the number of voters actually committed to supporting DeSantis in the primary is…3.5%.
Trump will probably not be at the first debate, especially after the release of his Georgia indictment - he’s signaled for a long time that he has no intentions of attending - meaning that DeSantis will be center-stage in a field of between 4 to 6 other individuals (depending on whether or not Mike Pence and/or Doug Burgum qualify), and every single one of them will have DeSantis directly in their crosshairs. All of these contenders realize that if they want to be the main Trump-alternative, they have to go through DeSantis. While none of them are as politically skilled as Donald Trump, they can all smell the stench of weakness emanating from DeSantis and his train-wreck of a campaign.
DeSantis, being the “frontrunner” of the non-Trump candidates, will have a massive target on his body in the debate
DeSantis is not the current non-Trump frontrunner because of any unique political message or even his legislative accomplishments as the governor of Florida. His support is solely derived from his status as a lab-grown candidate formed from the Fox News-Murdock machine that has for the last year pumped his name out into the circles of the conservative media apparatus. The vast majority of anti-Trump Republican voters have not chosen DeSantis because they actually like him; they have simply been led by the conservative media apparatus like sheep being herded by dogs. When DeSantis is introduced to much of the American public for the first time, it will be the beginning of the end.
It might sound a bit shocking for the leading Republican presidential candidate to fall into the dumpster so quickly, but I would remind you that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker announced his campaign for President on July 13th, and was even beating Donald Trump in Iowa polls within two weeks. By September, he was only earning the support of 0.5% of voters and was the second choice candidate of just 2% of voters. By September 21, he was gone. Considering that DeSantis is already in free-fall from his peak at over 30%, it should not be shocking if he goes the way of Scott Walker or Jeb Bush.
What I think will happen:
DeSantis will walk into the first August debate with a narrow, but clear lead as the 2nd place frontrunner among the non-Trump Republican candidates. He still has the most money, he still retains the 2nd highest number of endorsements, and it’s unlikely that the Fox News Machine will completely give up on him before he gets a chance to debate on the national stage. DeSantis will stand alone in the middle under the invisible shadow of Donald Trump, who will be far away from the Milwaukee debate site that day. He might even be in the process of getting arraigned in Fulton County, Georgia. To DeSantis’ direct left and right will stand Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy in 3rd and 4th place. Two podiums away from the frontrunner will stand Chris Christie on one side, along with Nikki Haley on the other. Perhaps Mike Pence will be there, along with Doug Burgum - just prolonging their inevitable defeats.
The debate will be a TV ratings bonanza, even with Donald Trump being arraigned in Atlanta at or around the same time (he may even try to show up on the same day as the debate to upstage it). Voters will tune into Fox News to get their first glimpse of the men and women vying to be the next leader of the free world. Standing in the center of the stage will be the candidate so many of the voters have heard of - “that Ron DeSantis guy.” The first question will be for him - after all, he is the frontrunner of the people on stage.
And then - people will suddenly hear what he sounds like. “Oh god,” the voters will say to each other, as they huddle around their television screens. “He sounds like Donald Duck, but he looks like Eric Cartman,” they’ll exclaim. “When we said we were considering moving on from Trump, this wasn’t what we were thinking of,” the voters will think to themselves. Over the next 90 minutes, the other candidates on the stage will sink their jaws into Ron DeSantis, slowly roasting him like a slab of meat. Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor and a man on a mission-to-kill, will take every opportunity to hammer away at DeSantis until his political magnificence has been reduced to a pile of sawdust.
When the debate ends, the first articles to hit the press will read:
“ DeSantis - A Deer In the Headlights ”
“ DeSantis Crumbles Under the Spotlight ”
“ Scott and Ramaswamy Shine, DeSantis Falters ”
“ Winners and Losers From the 1st G.O.P. Debate…Losers: Ron DeSantis ”
” Ron DiSaster Faceplants in First GOP Debate ”
When the dust settles from the debate, the executives of Fox News, including Rupert Murdock, will huddle together in their boardroom like it’s an episode of Succession, and they will, with absolutely no reservations or emotional affliction, kill the Frankenstein monster they created. Suddenly, the hosts of The Five, Fox and Friends, and Outnumbered will be covering positive stories about Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy - possibly Glenn Youngkin too. No more of that loser named DeSantis.
By September, DeSantis will be shedding donors and burning cash faster than he can possibly replace it. In the spotlight will no longer be the Florida governor, the candidate of “DeFuture.” His polling will have gone from the 30s and approaching the 40s…to barely scraping more than 1 digit. His campaign will be on permanent and unbreakable life support. Like Jeb, he might still have the strength of his SuperPAC, Never Back Down, to make it to Iowa if he really wants to. If he has any shame, he’ll drop out of the race before the New Year. But even if he does stay in, he will be overshadowed by Tim Scott in the state of Iowa, because Scott is the actual evangelical who can appeal to the voters of the Hawkeye State.
Trump will easily win Iowa with over 50% of the vote, with Scott in a distant second, Ramaswamy in 3rd, while DeSantis might manage a fourth place finish. In New Hampshire, Trump will emerge victorious by an even larger margin, with Ramaswamy in 2nd, and Scott in 3rd. By this point, DeSantis will simply be eating the breadcrumbs left on the ground by the voters of the Granite State. He will fare no better in Nevada, South Carolina, and Michigan, and before Super Tuesday, he will be getting calls from his donors, telling him to drop out and clear the field for Tim Scott or Ramaswamy (or Youngkin if he runs) to face Donald Trump in a 1-on-1 contest on Super Tuesday. Poof. All that promise, all that money - gone.
Credit: The Daily Beast
For Donald Trump, the game will hardly change. In most polls, he actually does better against every other candidate not named Ron DeSantis when placed in a direct 1-on-1 contest. As I stated in an earlier article about Tim Scott, another contender, Trump beats DeSantis 65-35, but beats Tim Scott 75-25%.
In many ways, the fall of DeSantis might actually be the final nail in the coffin for Republicans’ hopes of taking down Trump because their field of opposition will no longer have hope of being unified behind a single candidate. Back in December, when Republicans were blaming Donald Trump for their midterm losses, DeSantis commanded 35% of the vote, and was almost nipping at Trump’s heels. If DeSantis had been a strong enough candidate to “clear the field” by the 1st debate, a path victory would have been completely plausible.
But with DeSantis gone, there really isn’t enough time for a unifying force to fight against Trump. Instead, the anti-Trump will be likely divided between the “not Trumpy” candidates like Tim Scott, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley that are essentially running folksy, positive-sounding campaigns that are better suited for a dead era of conservative politics, while you also have “Trump without the handcuffs” candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy, who is leading a ridiculous, but compelling (for right-wingers) crusade against “wokeism” by calling for banning people under 25 from voting and ending birthright citizenship.
In the end, the difference made by DeSantis’ exit may just be academic in its notability. It will merely be something for casual observers to laugh at, and for political scientists to dissect.
A reminder: DeSantis is term-limited in his own state, and has no political job openings waiting for him, meaning that his fame could fade into political oblivion faster than you might think possible. In 1962, John Kennedy said to America that by the end of the decade, we might reach the surface of the moon. In 2023, I say to you - by the end of this decade, Ron DeSantis will have driven so far past the last exit to irrelevance that many people will not even remember his name.
Trump will still win every state in the primary: He’ll win Iowa by 20 points, cruise to victory in New Hampshire by 30, take Nevada by 30 as well, and then destroy the field by 40 points in South Carolina. By that point, the only two remaining candidates will likely be Scott and Ramaswamy, who will both finish under 20% in Michigan. By March 5th, which is Super Tuesday, Republican voters will already be hitched back onto the Trump train, and he will sweep all 14 contests. Game over.
This article is sourced from my personal political blog, which can be found HERE (please feel free to subscribe to it for the price of $0)
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