Waiting for DeSaster
JV Last with some important history of recent primaries:
1. Comebacks
I want to take a walk through history to illustrate the fact that presidential primary comebacks happen. And then to explain why I think a DeSantis comeback is not the most likely outcome.
Let’s start with a level-set. Here’s where the race stands today:
Yes, it’s early. There’s a lot of campaign left. There are known-unknowns lurking in the offices of various prosecutors. These are national polls. There are actuarial tables. But still: Not great for DeSantis.
-Trump is over 50 percent.
-DeSantis already got his first look.
-And his support is waning.
Here’s the thing: Usually when a candidate in a divided field is over the 50 percent mark, is growing, and has a 37-point lead, they win.
2004 Democrats
Around this time in 2003, Joe Lieberman(!) led the Democratic field. He faded and Howard Dean eventually emerged as the clear frontrunner, with support in the 30s in a large field.
We all know what happened: John Kerry surged in Iowa, parlayed that into a win in New Hampshire, and then ran the table.
The dynamics of the 2004 race were quite different from 2024. Dean was the
Democratic candidate most willing to criticize the Iraq war and there was an appetite for that in the progressive base, which none of the other candidates were serving. He was also a fresh face, totally unknown outside of Vermont.
But ultimately Dean had three insurmountable problems:
-He was out of step with the party’s moderate center of gravity.
-He had exceedingly soft support among African Americans, who are a necessary part of any winning Democratic coalition.
-He was a weaker matchup against George W. Bush than any of the other top-tier contenders.
All of which is to say that I don’t think 2004/Dean/Kerry offers a good parallel for 2024/Trump/DeSantis.
2008 Republicans
Rudy Giuliani—who would one day ask his “business development” officer to Google “obstruction of justice” for him—was also in the 30s in a multi-candidate field.
Like Dean, Rudy was weak with a core part of his party’s coalition: evangelicals. Unlike Dean, his candidacy was based on pre-existing celebrity as America’s Mayor after 9/11. So he had the opposite problem: He wasn’t a fresh face—his numbers were bloated by high name-ID.
John McCain was also doing well in early polls. Then he collapsed. And then he came back to capture the nomination.
The McCain example isn’t a bad one for DeSantis, in terms of the general arc of his numbers. He had a strong base of support; his support waned; then he rebuilt it and won the delegate race.
But it’s important to understand how McCain did it. First, he premised nearly his entire campaign around foreign policy and the surge in Iraq. That was his issue and he was simultaneously campaigning on it and advocating for it as a senator. He wanted to implement the Petraeus surge and was willing to stake his future on it. The surge worked and rescued the Iraq war.
Second, McCain’s principal challenger down the stretch was Mitt Romney, who never had a commanding lead and was at the time an awkward politician desperately trying to shove himself into a pre-existing mold that did not fit him. And if there’s one thing you can take to the bank, it’s this: Voters almost always choose authenticity over artifice.
Again: Not encouraging for DeSantis.
2008 Democrats
This might be the granddaddy of them all: At this point in 2008, Hillary Clinton led her nearest rival by between 14 and 20 points. Her lead over Obama peaked at +33 in late September 2007—and even then it was only that high in a couple of polls.
Everyone knows the story of what happened next: Barack Obama caught fire. He climbed steadily, eventually surpassing Clinton in the polls in January 2008. And once he took the lead, he never relinquished it. He dipped slightly to a statistical tie following his loss in New Hampshire, but quickly recovered and won a grueling marathon for delegates. (Even though Clinton got more primary votes.
This is a pretty good model for DeSantis: A fresh face beating a commanding favorite who was (a) a long-time part of the political scene and (b) deeply polarizing.
Yet four aspects of this race stand out:
-Obama defeated Clinton very narrowly. This was the closest nominating contest of my lifetime and it easily could have gone the other way.
-Clinton’s initial advantage was immense. But it was barely half the size of Trump’s current lead.
-Obama was a generational political talent.
-Once Democratic voters gave Obama a first look, they never turned their backs on him. Obama did not have a period where Democratic supporters defected from him en masse
The past is not prologue. These contests are infrequent enough that we should use them as lenses through which we examine the world, not as determinative models.
What I take from them, though, is one big, overarching idea:
Donald Trump’s position in this primary is the most dominant of any non-incumbent president since the advent of the modern system. His polling lead is enormous. His advantages in party structure and elite support are large. As a pure matter of political horseflesh, he is a better candidate than Ron DeSantis. Culturally he is more in step with the party’s base. Finally, there is no issue set with which DeSantis can distinguish himself from Trump.
Combine this with the facts that (1) Trump’s support with Republican voters seems incredibly durable, at this point extending back seven years and through more scandals than anyone can count; and (2) it does not seem as though the base will countenance attacks on Trump.
Put it all together and while it’s possible DeSantis could win, it’s also possible that this race will not be very competitive.
I hope it is.
It would be better for all of us if DeSantis wins the nomination. But it seems equally possible that the best analog for this contest is the 2000 Democratic nomination, when Bill Bradley prevented Al Gore from being crowned, but not much more than that.
There are a couple of important unique aspects of this primary. The first is that Donald Trump may be under criminal indictment in multiple cases. That didn’t stop Benjamin Netanyahu from winning recently and it may not stop Trump but nobody knows how it will land. it’s never happened here before.
The second is that it’s Donald Trump. There’s nobody like him and there’s never been a cult of personality like his in American politics. So while it’s a cliche to say that anything can happen — anything can happen.
And I’m not at all convinced that a DeSantis win would be better than Trump. He is not a conventional politician either and I don’t know why everyone assumes that unlike Trump he would accept it if he lost the election. They’ve all seen what Trump did. There’s little reason to believe that DeSantis wouldn’t see the same benefits if he were in the same position. Why wouldn’t he?