Between Don, Ron, and a Hard Place

Which is More Electable? Is Either of Them?

The 2022 midterms are over; thus, the 2024 primary season is about to begin. While many candidates are considering a run for the White House, the only two leading contenders for the Republican nomination are former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Supporters of each have laid the groundwork for why their candidate and only their candidate can defeat Joe Biden in 2024. Looking at the lay of the land and electorate as it stands, neither candidate is a shoo-in, and both have serious obstacles going into the presidential race. Republican primary voters are caught between Don, Ron, and a hard place.

Let’s start with former President Trump.

His victory in the 2016 election, both in the primary and general, was nothing short of a phenomenon. It may be hard to remember now, especially for younger readers who were children during the first campaign, but Trump’s run was treated as a joke and then, an existential threat to the GOP. In a crowded field of candidates, he found the perfect plurality of voters who were also tired of the Republican Party of George W. Bush, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell. They were done with the endless wars, the demands to cut social security and Medicaid, the holy rolling of the religious right, and most importantly, were not supportive of amnesty or mass legal immigration.

Trump was going to pull out of wars, deport illegal aliens, and let Caitlyn Jenner use whichever bathroom she preferred — that was okay with a plurality of Republican voters back in 2016.

Many Republicans are trying to do a cleaned-up version of Trumpism. They have narrowed down the specifics of immigration to public safety and economics - which is fair because immigration does affect those things. What Trump tapped into, however, was the growing anxiety of white working-class voters that the demographics and cultural changes to the U.S. had become so extreme over such a short period that they felt like strangers in the nation they were born. A PRRI/Atlantic survey from 2016 found that 46 percent of white working-class voters felt like strangers in their own country. (Side note: This sentiment was also shared by 48 percent of black Americans).

A whopping 68 percent of white working-class Americans believed the American way of life needed to be protected from foreign influences, a feeling shared with 44 percent of college-educated whites as well. Things had become so dire in their minds that nearly 2/3rds of all Trump voters and half of white working-class voters felt the 2016 election was the last time to save America.

Those sentiments haven’t gone away over time. According to an October 2022 report from The University of Virginia, 84 percent of voters who supported Trump in 2020 worry that discrimination against whites will increase over the next couple of years. This sentiment is also shared by 38 percent of Biden voters.

It’s why Trump has such, for lack of a better word, brand loyalty with this group of voters. Every lousy hire, every time he endorsed a Romney, Ryan, or McConnell, and every time he came short on achieving campaign promises, or when he allowed liberal son-in-law Jared Kushner to make decisions in the White House, it was all forgiven. Trump was always the victim of circumstance or the lone warrior against the deep state and establishment, never the villain in their eyes.

It’s why in recent polls against DeSantis, Trump still locks in most of his support from non-college-educated white voters. To those voters, Trump is the only person who understands them and is willing to risk everything for them.

Along the way, he’s also picked up a collection of other die-hard supporters, especially working-class Hispanics who thought that the left had gone insane over pronouns and protecting criminals. Although, maybe they just liked that “yo voy a votar por Donald Trump!” — it is catchy.

Yet this group of supporters, while large enough to win a Republican primary, isn’t even close to big enough to win a general election. Trump’s brand is electrifying to 30 percent of the country and utterly toxic to over 50 percent, especially in crucial swing states — just ask Arizona’s Kari Lake, Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano, Michigan’s Tudor Dixon, and New Hampshire’s Don Bouldoc.

A New York Times/Siena poll found that Trump’s unfavorable rating with college-educated whites is 60 percent and he would lose this demographic by nearly 20 points. I know you may be thinking to yourself, this is a fake poll… they’re not the only ones.

And if you look at the 2022 midterm election, where Republicans fell short were in key swing districts in the suburbs around Philadelphia, Detroit, Manchester, Raleigh, Atlanta, Austin, Houston, Madison, and Phoenix.

It’s challenging to see how voters in these districts that just voted against Trump-backed candidates in the midterms will suddenly switch to support the man himself. Upper-income, college-educated voters aren’t like they used to be. Because of the increasing wealth gap, they’re more insulated from waves of crime and inflation than they were a generation ago. Their children are less likely to serve in the military, and they are less likely to live around people outside of their socio-economic status, giving them permission to worry about poverty, crime, and social progress in ways that are divorced from reality. This movement by college-educated suburbanites started decades ago but accelerated under Trump and shows little signs of returning. Some recent politicians have been able to bridge this gap and bring a portion of them home: DeSantis in Florida, Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, Brian Kemp in Georgia, and Mike DeWine in Ohio, but they are all governors who can have some distance from the more divisive national politics.

And it’s statistically impossible for Republicans to make up this big loss of college-educated with Hispanics and Asians moving into their coalitions. There aren’t enough in important swing states that would vote for the GOP.

They could always try to increase the number of non-college-educated whites. As of 2016, there were over 47 million who weren’t even registered to vote. So let’s say there are fewer now. If Trump could convince 20 percent of them to register and vote, it would be a game-changer, but it’s easier said than done.

It’s why many Republicans, both in and out of the establishment, are flocking to the defacto non-Trump candidate Governor Ron DeSantis.

Heading into 2024, DeSantis has a lot to boast about. He’s had multiple legislative accomplishments, was a national hero for the anti-COVID lockdown voters, taken on Disney, fought for as many Republican Congressional seats as possible, and won the most significant election victory in decades in Florida, even turning blue strongholds red. The state legislature is super-majority Republican, and he’s the king of Florida.

While DeSantis was able to turn out vast portions of the Republican base for his re-election, he may have a problem with some of the Trump base if he became the GOP nominee.

DeSantis the governor and DeSantis the congressman are two very different politicians. The governor is the man who used the power of the state to rightfully push back against woke corporations, vaccine mandates, drag queen story hour, and BLM riots.

He learned many right lessons from Trump and how power could be used to reward your voters, something Republican activists criticize the GOP for not doing once they have the majority.

As a congressman, however, he was much more of a traditional small-government Republican supporting popular measures like term limits, a five-year lobbying ban for congressional and executive employees, and trying to abolish the congressional pension. He also earned very high grades from immigration groups like NumbersUSA and FAIR but never spoke on the issue the way Trump did, bringing former Democrats into his base.

Yet as a member of the Republican Study Committee, DeSantis took some positions that hurt him in the 2018 election and will come back to haunt him during a presidential run. For example, in 2013, 2014, and 2015, he supported non-binding resolutions (which aren’t laws) for a conservative budget that would have increased the Social Security and Medicare retirement age to 70. They also would have changed Medicare to a premium support system and switched Social Security to another method for cost of living adjustments known as CPI.

Now, this is very in the weeds and ultimately a rather useless conversation since none of the measures passed. That didn’t stop both Democrats and his fellow Republicans from attacking him on the issue back in the 2018 election that he barely won. If you think it will be an issue Biden, or whomever the Democrats nominate, don’t bring up, think again.

Over the last decade, Democrats have linked DeSantis to Paul Ryan on multiple occasions. And despite what anyone may tell you about how wonderful the former Speaker is, his economic views on entitlements have been rejected over and over by voters. So to align yourself with Paul Ryan’s economic vision is a decision to lose a national election.

We still don’t know about DeSantis’ other positions on trade and foreign policy, so I don’t want to put words in his mouth or make any suggestions based on his past. But maybe he can find a way to craft a coalition that will include Trump’s base and right-leaning suburbanites who abandoned the GOP over the last decade. It’s possible but not a sure thing. It’s certainly not as much of a guarantee as some on the right are selling it.

One thing is obvious in my eyes: If DeSantis wants to run for president, he must do it in 2024. If he doesn’t do it and Trump wins, whomever he picks as vice president will be next in line to get the party’s nomination in 2028. If Trump runs and he loses, many will be looking for a new nominee. Still, by then, DeSantis will be a former governor who will fight to keep his name in the spotlight with many other upcoming Senators and governors who want to take a stab at it.

More importantly, let’s say the party is done with Trump. Let’s say they’ve moved on, as some head-to-head contests with DeSantis suggest, and he’s going to lose to someone. The other people who can unite large factions of the party, like Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, will reverse all the progress made in the last half-decade for the populist wing of the GOP.

DeSantis has plenty of time to decide. He certainly shouldn’t announce before the end of the Florida legislative session in June, where he can score huge wins for the state and his supporters.

But it’s very much an open question if Trump can win nationally after his endorsed candidates lost in every major swing state. It’s very much up in the air if DeSantis can keep together Trump’s base without him.