DeSantis Never Really Had A Chance To Beat Trump, But Now He's Fighting To Have A Political Future

The Trafalgar Group is an unreliable polling operation because it’s a Republican Party front that always slants its methodology to give Republicans an advantage. I ignore it in general election match-ups. But… in GOP primaries it can be a reasonable weathervane. And Trafalgar has the most current poll of Iowa GOP likely caucus goers. The results show that DeSantis is still in double digits and still slightly ahead of Nikki Haley— and still nowhere near Señor Trumpanzee:

Privately, DeSantis acknowledges that the January 15 Iowa caucus will determine whether or not his campaign can continue. To the media, he still says he’ll win but that is not going to happen. If he comes in a strong second— operative word: “strong”— he may decide to go on for another 2 weeks to the New Hampshire primary, where he'd be very lucky to come in third. The most recent poll— by CNN and the University of New Hampshire— shows him way down, struggling with Ramaswamy for 4th place.

This is also interesting to look at from the perspective of a sad truth: the more voters see of DeSantis and get to know him, the less they like him. In September, 22% of Republicans said they would never vote for him under any circumstances. Now, after intense campaigning, 28% say they would never vote for him. Compare that to Christie and Haley whose campaigning seems to have actually paid off for them:

Back to Iowa, DeSantis has been endorsed by the governor and by one of the top evangelical political bosses but neither endorsement seems to have moved the needle for him. With his SuperPAC— which he has been illegally coordinating with and has allowed to run his campaign— collapsing into a cycle of dysfunction and acrimony, his campaign appears to be on its last leg. I found it interesting on Meet The Press yesterday that he told Kristen Welker he would supersede ObamaCare, criticizing Trump for not doing so. But when she asked for how he would make the plan better, he had no answer at all, saying only that he would have a proposal to lay out “in the spring.” The chance of DeSantis still being in the race in the spring is, at best, remote.

Before the March 19 Florida primary, where Trump is crushing him in polling right now, he would have to endure likely losses in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, the Virgin Islands, Michigan, Idaho, Missouri, DC, North Dakota, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, American Samoa, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi and Washington. And all that just to be humiliated in his own state. The most recent poll of registered Republicans shows Trump crushing him 61-20%. My guess is that he’ll never be rolling out any alternative to ObamaCare “in the spring” beyond the bullshit he spewed out on Meet thePress yesterday: “more transparency, more consumer choice, more affordable options, less red tape, less bureaucracy weighing everybody down.”

The problem for DeSantis is that he allowed himself to be turned into a pathetic Trump punching bag. Trump attacks him everyday. And DeSantis barely whispers anything negative about Trump, still hoping Trump will die or go to prison and that he’ll inherit the MAGAts. Yesterday in Iowa, Trump was visibly senile onstage. One of Dana Bash’s guests on State of the Union yesterday, a former Trump comms director Alyssa Farah Griffin, said she was stunned by what amounts to as massive cognitive decline. She called it “slowing down” and “a lack of sharpness in what he's saying and a lack of kind of clarity.” Had DeSantis been pounding away on this kind of thing-- demanding every day, for example, that Trump debate him to prove he's got what it takes-- he might have had a chance. He didn’t— and he doesn’t.