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The political fortunes of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have reversed in the past six months. After being re-elected as Florida governor, DeSantis looks like a strong potential presidential candidate as Trump struggles with legal and personal challenges. Now that Trump is leading the opinion polls, DeSantis has struggled to solidify his star status and, in some corners, it’s growing increasingly clear that Trump’s presidential nomination is inevitable.
I would be wary of those feelings, no matter how Trump is doing now. After months of reporting on the early stages of the 2024 presidential race, I’ve seen how the narrative can omit important factors shaping the race. And that is how conventional wisdom begins to form in a way that is divorced from evidence or data. (See: Republican wave expectations in last year’s midterm elections.)
DeSantis is expected to officially enter the race tomorrow. Here are two narratives about his candidacy that could use revision.
Narrative 1: DeSantis is toast.
Fact: There is an opening for a Trump alternative, whether DeSantis or someone else.
Trump’s hold on Republican voters has always been low. He has never won a majority of voters in a contested Republican primary. At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in California this year, one delegate said that party insiders estimated that about 30 to 35 percent of Republican voters do not support Trump, while another, smaller group favors him as the nominee when considering other options. .
For other candidates, the numbers create a road map to victory: Unite the majority of Republicans who prefer a different nominee. This group includes factions like Tea Party conservatives who supported Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in the 2016 primary and business-focused moderates who supported candidates like Governor John Kasich of Ohio in 2016.
Appealing to them is a difficult task. These groups have historically opposed Trump for different reasons and no candidate has succeeded in uniting them, but there are requirements for an anti-Trump coalition.
One route for candidates like DeSantis or Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who joined the Republican field yesterday, is to win the nomination without crossing Trump. As my friend Nate Cohn has written , one strategy for defeating Trump is to contain a political message without being direct. For some Republicans, this is a welcome direction. My reporting has made it clear that given the criminal investigation that Trump is facing, some of his rivals have followed him to blow themselves up.
However, the strategy is passive, which could play into Trump’s hands. Outside a Manhattan courthouse as Trump was indicted on fraud charges related to his 2016 campaign, conservative media provocateur Jack Posobiec said people close to the Trump campaign predicted that more indictments would boost his candidacy, not harm it. He said he believed Trump would have a chance to galvanize voters by portraying law enforcement as politically motivated and out to prevent his candidacy.
Posobiec pointed to the news media attention, increased fundraising and polling that Trump secured after the indictment.
Narrative 2: DeSantis’ biggest problem is Donald Trump.
Reality: Yes, but he has other problems to deal with first.
DeSantis no longer intimidates candidates who once cherished her status as the runner-up in the Trump alternative ballot. Last week, several Republican governors made important moves: Doug Burgum of North Dakota – a former Microsoft executive – made overtures to join the 2024 field, and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia released an advertisement linking himself to Ronald Reagan. Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire also said he is considering entering the race, days after reports that former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey may also enter.
The move shows the party is not afraid of DeSantis’ candidacy and is further evidence that the campaign’s first task is not to go after Trump, but to persuade voters and primary opponents that he is Trump’s strongest rival. At the RNC meeting, Trump’s advisers told me that the campaign would like the field to get 10 candidates. “The better the better for us,” the adviser said, appealing to the logic that several candidates polling in the single digits would hurt DeSantis’ ability to put together a coalition.
DeSantis’ soft work was on display two months ago, when he announced his isolationist views on the war in Ukraine, an obvious play on Trump’s supporters. DeSantis’ statement drew backlash from Republican commentators and donors, and two other presidential candidates — former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and former Vice President Mike Pence — used it to attack him.
That’s the danger of DeSantis’ unique electoral position: While he entered the race as an established Trump alternative, he angered other contenders who wanted to elevate themselves.
When DeSantis announced his candidacy this week, he would be an underdog, but not for long. No one has raised more than $110 million.
Africa and the future
This year’s edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale, a global architecture exhibition, takes on fraught subjects – race, colonialism, climate change – through the lens of Africa and its diaspora. The result was the most ambitious and incisive political Biennale in years, critic Christopher Hawthorne wrote in The Times.
apart: In the US pavilion, architects consider how to coexist with plastic.
PLAY, WATCH, EAT
What to cook
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