Meatball Ron Is Falling Apart Before Our Eyes
In the latest FiveThirtyEight polling average of GOP primary voters, DeSantis’ steady slide has accelerated slightly. He went down by more than 2% and is barely above 20% nationally. Even his hold on the #2 slot is no longer safe. Pence, Ramaswarmy and Haley are all a lot closer to overtaking him than he is to overtaking Trump.
Yesterday he got clobbered from an unexpected direction: Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin. Using him as a punching bag in a fundraising e-mail, she told her supporters that when she came out [as gay] in college, she “couldn’t imagine someone like me running for office, let alone winning. But earlier generations paved the way for me and other LGBTQ+ candidates to get to where we are today. Our stories won’t be erased by right-wing extremists like Ron DeSantis. As Governor of Florida, DeSantis has signed some of the nation’s most draconian and hateful policies into law— including a book ban targeting stories written by or about LGBTQ+ people. One of his most recent bans targets
a book because it simply mentions that I was the first openly-gay U.S. Senator elected in our nation’s history. I’ve spent years fighting back against anti-LGBTQ+ extremism from right-wing politicians like DeSantis, and I won’t quit until all LGBTQ+ Americans are free to be who they are and love who they love without fear. Advocating for our rights and freedoms in the U.S. Senate has never been more important.”
Monday morning Shelby Talcott reported that “The growing sense of crisis around Ron DeSantis’ campaign intensified over the weekend with reports that his campaign side is burning through cash, running out of big donors, and laying off staff. And, in another interesting twist, DeSantis— who in March derided corporate media as ‘very, very untrustworthy’ and urged conservatives not to ‘play into it’— is sitting down with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday. The shifting campaign strategy coincides with stagnating poll numbers, some campaign missteps, and a growing lead by Donald Trump.”
Shelby speculated that the bad news “doesn’t mean he’s dead. But he’s entered a familiar cycle that often ends in collapse: A candidate is hyped up as a top contender, struggles in the polls, and then scrambles to reset a flagging campaign as donors and voters alike parse every move for signs of weakness— or strength. Donors are a key group for DeSantis, who is more reliant on big Republican money than Trump.”
DeSantis— like all the other candidates… even down to Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum— are all waiting for Trump to die, go to prison or somehow unravel. They all know there’s no other way to beat him. That’s why DeSantis tries too never make himself an enemy of the MAGAts. He’ll need them after Trump is no longer in the mix, which is the only way he’ll get the 2024 nomination. In his Bastille Day column, George Will wrote that neither Trump nor DeSantis will be the nominee, who are both “brittle. Trump, as stale as a month-old crust of sourdough, is running to win the 2020 election… DeSantis, after nearly two months of intensified exposure to non-Floridians, resembles a political Edsel. That was the new car model that debuted to much fanfare in 1957, backed by Ford’s marketing might. It expired in 1959, becoming a byword for disastrously misreading consumers. DeSantis is running hard to be president of Iowa, or of that minority of Iowans who will vote in the January caucuses and think Trump is ideologically squishy (e.g., regarding wokeness) and insufficiently abrasive (e.g., regarding gay rights).”
The NBC News report that generated so much alarm in Camp Meatball noted that DeSantis tapped out top donors and burned through $7.9 million in his first six weeks as a presidential candidate… The numbers suggest, for the first time, that solvency could be a threat to DeSantis’ campaign, which has touted its fundraising ability as a key measure of viability. They reflect the broader reality that DeSantis stalled after his launch: polling ahead of the Republican primary pack but far behind Trump. In another sign of the financial strain on the campaign, DeSantis has fired a dozen staffers in what a source familiar with the move described as a cost-cutting measure… [M]ore than two-thirds of DeSantis’ money— nearly $14 million— came from donors who gave the legal maximum and cannot donate again, NBC’s analysis shows. Some of those donors gave the $3,300 limit for both the primary and general election, boosting DeSantis’ totals with cash that can’t be used to try to defeat Trump… DeSantis spent about 40% of what he raised, in part by paying salaries to 92 people (before the staff firings). That gave him by far the biggest staff footprint of the GOP presidential candidates but also left him with the question of how he can sustain his payroll— or anything close to it— without finding new sources of revenue. Already, he is struggling to keep high-profile supporters on board.”
Hannah Knowles, Josh Dawsey, Michael Scherer and Marianne Levine reported that 7 weeks into his campaign, “skepticism about the Florida governor’s 2024 bid has grown. Some people who have advised and supported DeSantis have raised private concerns about his message, and the effectiveness and insularity of his campaign operation… The doubts extend to long-friendly Fox News— where a recent headline asked, ‘Will DeSantis sink and fade out?’— and its owner, the conservative media magnate Rupert Murdoch, according to another person who speaks regularly with Murdoch about the presidential race. ‘He was excited about him at the beginning, but the more he shows himself, the less appealing he is,’ said this person, who like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations and talk more freely. Murdoch will ‘come back to Trump if he thinks Trump can win,’ this person added.”
[O]ne donor who recently co-hosted an event for DeSantis described hearing sentiments such as, “What’s going on?” and “Does he even have a chance?” from associates. This donor said he was trying to get other rich Republicans to give to DeSantis, but most wanted to keep their powder dry after his lackluster beginning.
…Past races have also exposed plenty of early flame-outs— such as Republicans Scott Walker and Jeb Bush in 2016— and DeSantis is determined not to join their ranks. But some supporters acknowledge that he has yet to establish himself as the consensus candidate to challenge Trump.
“I’ve told other people there is a lane in Iowa for somebody other than Trump,” said Brent Siegrist, one of the roughly three dozen Iowa state legislators who have endorsed DeSantis. “And everybody kind of assumed DeSantis was going to fill it and that remains to be seen.”
…Even attendees at DeSantis events said they have been drawn to Trump’s charisma— and the former president took every opportunity to draw a contrast, joking that his rival needed a “personality transplant.” On the trail, DeSantis can be brief with voters and terse with reporters.
“Even though he speaks strongly about what he believes, I think you’re just comparing him to a person who is much stronger in terms of stage presence,” said Bill Wimberly, who came out to see DeSantis this summer in Gilbert, South Carolina.
…Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator who has criticized Trump and agrees with DeSantis on many issues, urged DeSantis to talk less about Florida— the most-used word in DeSantis’s kickoff speech, outside basic conjunctions— and more about national policy, especially on pocketbook issues.
“I would use the word rudderless,” Erickson said in an interview. He said DeSantis was the candidate his radio show callers talked the most about— but excitement had given way to disappointment with his campaign.
After he was recently critical of DeSantis on Twitter, he said campaign staffers called to see what he was hearing— and asked if he was going to publish anything.
“It’s a campaign without a message yet. I overwhelmingly hear from callers on my radio show that we don’t care about Florida. What can you do for me?” he said.
And it's not just Republicans and conservatives who DeSantis is rapidly turning off. Normal people are hearing him threaten Social Security and Medicare as well and coming to the conclusion that he is the sworn enemy of working families... which he's always been, even if Florida voters have been too stupid to figure that out on their own... before their homes have become uninsurable.
WhoWhatWhy also featured The Incredible Shrinking Candidate over the weekend, highlighting his fundraising totals to conclude that “Voters are just not warming up to DeSantis. When you are trying to overtake a populist like Trump in his own lane, that’s a real problem. Wealthy establishment Republicans, on the other hand, like the governor well enough. His first FEC filing shows that the bulk of his money comes from rich donors, many of whom are maxing out their contributions already. Unfortunately for DeSantis they only get one vote each in the primary. While these rich benefactors can give a candidate a big shot in the arm to start a campaign, in order to keep it going you need an army of small-money donors who contribute again and again. They are the lifeblood of a campaign. And this is where we can find perhaps the biggest red flag in the governor’s filing. Of the $20 million DeSantis raised since jumping into the race, only $2.8 million came from people who gave less than $200. That indicates a lack of grassroots support… [T]he filing also shows that donations have slowed significantly already after the first few days following the governor’s official announcement that he is seeking the GOP nomination.”
On Sunday, Politico concluded that “A negative narrative is taking hold about his campaign— that it is bloated, is overconfident, lacks a clear strategy, etc. Pair that with preexisting negative impressions about the candidate himself (that he is combative, not personable, awkward in retail settings, etc.) and a press corps that is— let’s be honest— somewhat tired of Trump and remains fascinated by the Florida governor, and there are real hurdles ahead for DeSantis… The ‘DeSantis in decline’ storyline is a body blow to one of the central arguments for his campaign: that he’d be a competent, disciplined version of Trump. Trump without the chaos. Trump, but with a more professional operation. That’s an easier sell when things are going well: People on the team are generally satisfied, and there’s no need to point fingers. But things are not going well for DeSantis.”
And then there was Trump, laughing and reminding Republicans that things are going badly in Florida and Meatball was in Iowa and New Hampshire and… everywhere but Florida. Señor T: “We are totally dominating DeSantis right here in the state of Florida. So we want him to get home and take care of insurance because you have the highest insurance in the nation… DeSanctimonious and his establishment handlers are wasting such precious time and resources to divide the party. They’re dividing the party. Although, he’s dropping so quickly. He’s probably not going to be in second place much longer.”