Things aren’t looking good for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his (still unannounced, but highly likely) quest for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination as of May 9.
It’s one of the Florida governor’s poorest showings of the several dozen recorded by Real Clear Politics for over a year now. The average already showed Trump ahead by 29.1 points even without this latest poll.
It’s questionable that an “official” announcement at this point is going to alter the numbers all that much.
Trailing DeSantis by only 14 points (compared to his 41-point deficit) in the Morning Consult survey are former Vice President Mike Pence (also unannounced) and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (no longer so surprisingly since his support is growing) at 5 each. Trailing them are former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley (3) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (2). The rest, including big names such as Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who has formed an exploratory committee, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, barely register.
The caveat, of course, is that no polls are remotely scientific. Morning Consult only called races accurately 73 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight, which monitors such things. And MC is supposed to be a relatively good one. Would the average citizen do any worse guessing the results by the seat of their pants? Candidates tend to remind us how unscientific the polls are, except when one shows them ahead.
Still, given his consistently depressing numbers that demonstrate no progress—in fact, the reverse—it’s hard not to wonder if DeSantis hasn’t entered (or considered entering) the presidential race prematurely and therefore—to adopt a term used to explain slipping TV shows—“jumped the shark,” wounding his chances for a run in 2028, when he might have been the heir apparent.
Unfortunately, he seems to have been a victim of what I call “political lust” in my forthcoming book “American Refugees.”
But a reason this Morning Consult poll might be suspect is that it shows Trump trailing Joe Biden by 2 and DeSantis trailing him by 4. Taken only a day or so earlier, an ABC/ Washington Post poll shows Trump up by 6 over Biden. They can’t both be right.
I think this is largely irrelevant, however, because I am among those who believe President Biden won’t be running for reelection. The auguries are everywhere, not the least being the departure of Susan Rice from his administration. Rice, although not a viable potential candidate herself, has functioned for years as Barack Obama’s loyal hatchet woman.
Is she off scouting a replacement or preparing the ground for someone already chosen?
It’s likely that Obama, who has told us directly of his preference for “governing from the basement” while keeping his hands clean with the public, has had enough of the increasingly cognitively challenged Biden as his amanuensis, not to mention his policies that are wrecking the country. You were supposed to do this slowly, in order not to be detected.
The time has come to find that viable replacement (not an easy task with the current Democratic Party bench) and put all energy behind him, her, or they. (“They” probably won’t fly with the public ... not yet anyway.)
This has become all the truer with the sudden appearance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a potential nominee. Kennedy stands in distinct opposition to many of the Obama policies.
Kennedy’s continued exposure, including his significant knowledge of the scientific details of the fraudulence of the government’s COVID-19 policy, poses a distinct threat to the current administration (and to a lesser extent to Trump as well). This is true, even with a corrupt media bending over backward to ignore how Europe—notably the Swiss, of all people—are reversing themselves on the efficacy of the mRNA vaccines and how the Cochrane Report demonstrated that the mask-wearing of the COVID years was a pointless and destructive endeavor, particularly to our children.
Worse yet for the Democratic Party would be an unearthing of CIA involvement in the assassination of Kennedy’s uncle, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. That could turn the Democratic Party, and the country with it, topsy-turvy.
In the two most recent polls—the only ones since Kennedy declared—RFK Jr. already stands at 20 percent of the vote against 66 percent for Biden. Where it will go from here is unclear. What is clear is that, at present, there is surprisingly more suspense on the Democratic than on the Republican side.
The rapid, almost instantaneous, rise of Kennedy no doubt gives more impetus to the Obama Party to find that Biden replacement.
Lately, Michelle Obama has been seen singing backup for Bruce Springsteen in Spain. Jill Biden was at the coronation of Charles III as a substitute for her husband who preferred, for no discernible reason, to go to Ireland a week or so before and decline, for the first time, such an epochal event with our oldest ally.
Is a power struggle of sorts going on in the Democratic Party? It seems that way.
Meanwhile, as I wrapped up this piece, a Manhattan jury in a civil trial found that Trump sexually abused and defamed onetime advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, now 79.
Trump will, of course, appeal, but it will likely be in front of another Manhattan judge, therefore another kangaroo court in a once-great city where a Good Samaritan who probably saved the lives of multiple fellow passengers on a subway may be about to face criminal charges. What a place!
Trump may eventually have to fork over $5 million to the lady who has already gotten her 15 minutes of fame.
Needless to say, that doesn’t augur well for the 45th president and leading Republican candidate to be the 47th’s more serious trial in the Stormy Daniels-related case.
But fraught as it sounds, will any of this be good, bad, or indifferent for his poll numbers? I’ll go with the latter.
