Ron DeSantis might win the Republican nomination for president in 2024. It could still happen! Lots of things could happen. For example, the guy who’s well in front of him in the polls could go to federal prison. But in the meantime, the Florida governor’s campaign is mostly employing the kinds of tactics, like spreading word of a “reboot” eight months before voting starts, that troubled campaigns employ while they’re on their way to becoming a cautionary tale about early hype.
This week’s milestone in the process was the circulation of an internal DeSantis team memo, first published by NBC News. This is a time-honored practice—making a supposedly frank and confidential case, which somehow leaks out to the press, that your candidate still has a clear path to victory, even though he or she is currently mega-behind one or more competitors.
The DeSantis team begins by noting that its candidate has banked a lot of money (true) and says it’s still early enough in the 2024 cycle for voters to change their minds.
Early state voters are only softly committed to the candidates they select on a ballot question this far out —including many [Donald] Trump supporters. Our focus group participants in the early states even say they don’t plan on making up their mind until they meet the candidates or watch them debate.
This is a fair point. The assessment of most of the other candidates in the race is also reasonable:
We’ve found low to no interest in Vivek [Ramaswamy], [Doug] Burgum, and Nikki [Haley] while far too many voters will not consider [Mike] Pence and [Chris] Christie for them to feel remotely viable.
It’s true, none of them probably have a chance, LOL. But that’s about it for claims in the memo that believably convey something like strength. After stating that “Trump and DeSantis remain the only viable options for two-thirds of the likely Republican primary electorate,” for instance, the document signals an imminent behind-the-scenes attack on …. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who is currently averaging 3.2 percent in national polls:
While Tim Scott has earned a serious look at this stage, his bio is lacking the fight that our electorate is looking for in the next President. We expect Tim Scott to receive appropriate scrutiny in the weeks ahead.
DeSantis’s team likely feels this is necessary because, as Politico reported on Thursday, some of the Republican donors whose highest priority is avoiding another Trump nomination are considering switching their allegiance to Scott.
The rest of the memo, a year from now, will look either like a testament to remaining calm and steady or to having run out of ideas very quickly. It says DeSantis will continue to discuss Trump’s “failings” when asked but will otherwise not bring the ex-president up. It says he will continue to earn free media coverage by introducing “big, bold ideas that will get people talking,” presumably along the lines of his late-June statement that suspected drug traffickers should be shot dead at the border. (The memo promises an autumn rollout of takes on subjects including “woke military” [sic] and “the deep state.”) And the campaign’s plan to build up its candidate’s “positives” may sound familiar as well:
We’ve found that when voters hear about the Governor’s bio principally as a Dad and as a veteran— they like him and are open to hearing more about him … A major paid media effort featuring the Governor’s bio (dad/family/veteran) will help us to convert image to ballot.
Compare that to what the Wall Street Journal wrote in April:
Mr. DeSantis is also preparing to introduce himself more on a personal level, aides say, drawing on his modest upbringing, athletic and academic achievements, military service and as a husband and father of three young children.
The major question of the DeSantis campaign is whether he can win the nomination by going around Trump rather than through him. On this question, the memo issues a resounding verdict of “maybe.” A really frank and confidential version of the campaign’s current strategy would go something like, “sit on a pile of money, eliminate threats like Tim Scott when necessary, and stay in a clear second place while Trump’s indictments play out.”
While that isn’t very inspiring, it’s also not necessarily stupid—as the memo says, “Trump is always the most efficient driver of his own negatives.” In other words, the introduction of Ron DeSantis to voters as a father and veteran will continue until morale improves.