Ron DeSantis' woes

The Washington Post has a long article about the troubles of Ron DeSantis’ campaign. It’s tempting to write off the Post’s piece, given how profoundly those who run the paper despise DeSantis and how desperately they want to see him crash and burn.

However, polling supports the view that DeSantis is losing ground. The two most recent surveys reported by Real Clear Politics have the Florida governor trailing Donald Trump by 39 points (Morning Consult) and 26 points (Economist/YouGov). He trails Trump by 32 points in the RCP average.

Last November, after the GOP’s poor showing in the mid-terms, Trump led DeSantis by 22 points in the RCP average. In mid-February, the gap was just 17 points.

The usual disclaimers apply. No one has voted yet. We’re half a year away from the first caucus. There hasn’t been a debate. Trump’s legal difficulties will mount. Frontrunners often don’t make it to the finish line.

Thus, it’s too early to write DeSantis off. But I don’t think it’s too early for his supporters to be concerned and for us to wonder what happened.

Here’s my take.

We can divide the Republican electorate into two categories — those who are well-disposed to having Trump be the GOP nominee and those who want to move on from him. I think the first group is larger than the second but probably not by much.

DeSantis’ path to the nomination, as I saw it, was to gain the support of a goodly number of those in the “well-disposed to Trump being nominated” category. This, he could hope to accomplish by being Trump-like without the drama and the baggage (though there are some who relish the drama and baggage).

DeSantis was never likely to gain anything close to majority support among this cohort. However, if he were to gain a decent slice of it, he could then become the overwhelming favorite of the second category of Republican voter — the ones who definitely want to move on from Trump. He would become their favorite by being the guy most likely to stop Trump.

So far, it’s not working out quite this way. Despite some early flirtation with DeSantis, the “well-disposed to Trump being nominated” contingent is standing pretty firmly by its man.

Why? Partly because Trump has savaged DeSantis and partly because the indictments of Trump have cemented the former president’s support. That’s how I see it, anyway.

Meanwhile, DeSantis struggles for support of the crowd that wants to move on from Trump for two reasons. First, because he hasn’t peeled away Trump supporters he can’t convincingly play the role of the only serious alternative to the former president.

Second, as he becomes more desperate to peel away Trump supporters, DeSantis comes across to Trump’s non-supporters as too much like the man they would like to dethrone. Thus, for a slice of this cohort, the kinder-gentler alternatives to Trump — Mike Pence, Tim Scott, and Nikki Haley — seem preferable. In the Morning Consult poll (admittedly the one in which DeSantis fares worst), the combined support of the kinder-gentler three nearly equals DeSantis’ support. (Vivek Ramaswamy is in third place in this poll. I imagine he’s competing with DeSantis for the votes of those who are well disposed to Trump but want a less drama-plagued alternative.)

The other problem for DeSantis is that Trump polls well against Joe Biden. We may be “the stupid party,” but I hope we’re not stupid enough to re-nominate the loser of the last presidential race if he has little hope of reversing the outcome in a rematch.

But polls show Trump and Biden running neck-and-neck. DeSantis fares no better.

I had high hopes for DeSantis’ campaign. I no longer do. However, it’s far too soon to view his campaign as hopeless.

Still, I’m not sure how the candidate overcomes the dynamic I’ve just described — the need to peel off strong Trump backers while not alienating those who want to nominate a non-Trumpy candidate.