Gov. Ron DeSantis doesn’t take many cues from President Joe Biden, the man he hopes to defeat in the 2024 presidential election.
But DeSantis may need to emulate Biden’s come-from-behind victory over a prohibitive frontrunner many inside his party believe cannot win a general election.
REPUBLICAN DEBATE: CAN THE DEBATES HELP WINNOW THE GOP FIELD?
Biden was more or less counted out from winning the Democratic nomination. And his woes continued as it got deeper into the election cycle, with actual votes being cast.
The future president turned in cranky and lackadaisical debate performances, musing at one point about turning down the record player at night and at times failing to anticipate attacks from his left.
Biden finished fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire with a single-digit share of the vote, and while he managed to place second in Nevada, he ran 26.6 points behind first-place finisher Bernie Sanders.
By this point, Sanders had won New Hampshire and Nevada in addition to placing second in delegates from Iowa while winning the state’s popular vote.
Luckily for Biden, Democrats recoiled in horror from nominating a socialist for president and jeopardizing their general election chances. Biden won big in the South Carolina primary and then never looked back on his way to the White House.
DeSantis hasn’t taken the debate stage for the first time yet. The first votes are still months away. The recent Des Moines Register poll showed him well behind, but with high favorability ratings and room to grow.
Unlike the cluttered Democratic primary of 2020, Republican candidates are many but few have much support. Biden had to contend with a handful of candidates with significant pockets of votes. DeSantis is already more or less in a two-man race with the frontrunner.
The Florida governor’s situation is therefore less dire than Biden’s was in early 2020. DeSantis would nevertheless like to see Republicans similarly recoil from nominating a multi-indicted and erratic candidate, putting the general election at risk.
Some Republican operatives believe that ending former President Donald Trump’s aura of inevitability and invincibility in even a single state contest could blow the race wide open.
There the precedent from across the aisle is the massive shift in allegiance from black primary voters from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama once the latter won Iowa in 2008.
But there are limits to these analogies. Trump’s lead among Republicans in 2023 is far stronger than any enjoyed by Democrats in 2019 or 2020. In fact, Biden still led in most national polls toward the end of 2019. He was even ahead in Iowa.
Similarly, the Clinton-Obama race was closer than Trump vs. DeSantis. A good poll for DeSantis nationally or in the early states has him down by 20 points. A bad one has him trailing by 40.
The departure of Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bloomberg, and Tom Steyer meaningfully cleared the field for Biden. Most of the 2024 Republican field doesn’t have many votes to transfer to DeSantis, though the absence of the tier below him would likely help him consolidate college-educated Republicans and give him a cleaner shot at Trump.
DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy have developed a relationship that at this point is more reminiscent of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Much of 2024 is going to hinge on whether DeSantis can hold the conservative Trump skeptics while peeling off the soft Trump vote without creating new lanes for more overtly anti-Trump candidates — think Chris Christie and, increasingly, Mike Pence — in the process.
The key difference between Trump and Sanders is that whatever the risks of nominating an indicted candidate — and there are many — is that Trump has already been president.
Trump won the 2016 election. And many Republican primary voters believe he won in 2020, despite coming up short to Biden. So the electability concerns might not be as paramount, unless the polls — which Trump has outperformed in both general elections — really take a sharp downward turn.
The other issue is that the indictments have been a rallying cry for a broader cross-section of the GOP primary electorate than socialism was for the Democrats in 2020, the Squad notwithstanding.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
But if DeSantis wants to calm Republican donors’ nerves and reassure restless voters that the race isn’t over yet, he can point to the man in the White House.
The same man DeSantis would like to beat, if he can get through Trump first.