DeSantis can't win the GOP nomination or the general election in 2024 {How Trump plays into this is allowed}

Personally, I think the Republicans will win the next presidency regardless of who they run except Trump (unless something unusual happens between now and then, like say a war with Russia). Trump still would have a good chance of winning, but he is the worst possible pick to run against Biden because of all the baggage he brings. But the Republicans got a good sense of how much they can press down on the scales, and not get a reaction. They’re going to go even more all in on keeping the wrong people from voting in the next election.

The other factor that tells me we’re in for a Republican president is MTG. Here is somebody who should have almost no political power at all. The GOP reaction to her should be “Yeah, the people voted her in, but she can sit in the corner and vote with us” but that has not been the reaction lately. She’s getting a lot of coverage, and some great assignments. This tells you where the GOP are headed, and they are headed deeper into crazy town. I think they believe this is a winning solution. They want the nothing but angry vote, and by God, they’ll get Americans angry enough to vote for them.

Could they get that on the strength of a running mate, with the guy at the top of the ticket more blandly presenting himself as a not-Biden choice?

Yet it’s not the same in effect, since there was the Blue Wave in 2018 (when Trump was at Biden’s current level of popularity) and the Blue Hold in 2022. There are of course other factors at work, such as the abortion fiasco, the extreme unpopularity of the Supreme Court, the continued presence of Trump in the political scene, etc., but Biden’s middling approval score does not seem to be hurting Democrats overall.

I think there is a qualitative aspect that approve/disapprove numbers don’t capture. While Biden may be disliked by GOP voters, Trump was absolutely despised by Democratic voters. Similarly, in 2016, Hillary was despised by a large percentage of GOP voters. This kind of disparity can drive voter turnout. (All of this is my speculation, but it seems reasonable to me.)

Yes, the Fox propaganda machine is a real advantage to the fascist right. That said, my mom has Fox News on 24/7 (:frowning:), and although they are constantly drumming on about Hunter Biden and whatnot, I detect a slight bit of deference toward Biden that they did not extend toward Hillary or even Obama. It’s just a feeling, and I can’t prove it, and I could be wrong.

It’s one thing to be able to say, “The economy nominally sucks, and we can beat up the Dems with it!” and another thing to really feel, personally, that the economy is bad. I think one thing that has changed in US politics over the past 50 years is that we (at least a much larger percentage of us) have this kind of meta horse race monitoring in our minds that people didn’t use to have. For example, DeSantis has a pretty, presentable wife that I think will work in DeSantis’s favor, though that factor has no influence on me. (Whereas, a voter in the 1970s or 1980s would probably just think about what things mean to them and not go “meta” and think about what they mean in the election.)

Thus, I think it’s possible that we can overestimate the “meta” aspect and underestimate the “what it means to me” aspect of any given thing. In the case of the economy, with unemployment being quite low, it’s possible that the nominal “bad economy” about which Fox News complains will be overcome by people just not feeling all that much pain in the aggregate.

True. I just don’t think that there are that many people on the right who truly hate Biden. Not enough to drive stronger voter turnout.

Yes, I think this is the biggest single thing. Trump will weaken DeSantis a lot, even if DeSantis can beat him.

The national popular vote margin is, of course, meaningless, other than bragging rights.

What could get worse for Democrats is that some of those swing states, which have GOP-controlled state houses (e.g., Georgia), are making changes to their election rules (fewer drop boxes, limits on absentee voting, etc.) which are likely structured to disadvantage Democratic voters.

It’s not the “debased wingnut shit” that I was referring to regarding Trump; it’s all of his other baggage (marital infidelity, tax evasion, serial lying, etc., etc., etc.)

The problem for DeSantis is that Trump actually drove GOP voter turnout quite well in 2020, to the point where Trump was able to brag that he had received more votes than any other candidate in history, etc. (except Biden in the same election!). I don’t think DeSantis can drive such passionate turnout. Meanwhile, Biden will have more years as president behind him and will seem safe and familiar to people.

Good point! I agree that that is a pretty savvy strategy.

Well, I think we need to distinguish between interest in politics and enthusiasm for a particular politician. I find the GOP primary race to be quite interesting myself, and I’m very curious about how it will shake out. Right now, I think there are a lot of Republicans who hope that a savior can appear and a good number that hope DeSantis could be it, but this number is larger than that of GOP voters who really feel they know DeSantis at this point.

This is a vital point–that the party is as important as the candidate.

Each party has its image, and a lot of swing voters* will vote for the image, not the person. Which is why I predict that the Republican party will win…no matter whether it is led by DeSantis or Trump

The Democrats are experts at shooting themselves in the foot. The Progressives are not going to sit quietly. They will affect the image of the Dem party…and it will create an image of leftist extremism which will scare the swing voters back to the Repub party.
In 2020, the slogan Defund the Police created an image which damaged the left.
And this time, the progressives will come up with a new slogan over an issue which will do even more damage. That issue is : reparations.
When they push hard for reparations,it will be easy for the Republicans to brand the entire Dem party as wanting to give a million dollars to every black person in the country.

Bill Maher (full-time comedian/commentator, part-time asshole) has said that the Dems need to be reminded that, whether they like it or not, half the population is still white . And he says that it’s not a good idea to make a slogan saying
white people suck.

If you scare off the swing voters, you lose.
– …–…—
*(who are the ONLY voters which matter, because they and only they will determine the winner)

If that were true, I don’t think Democrats would have done as well as they did in the 2022 midterms, no?

Can the GOP do much more voter suppression stuff than they already have? I have not heard too much about new efforts.

I agree about the trip to crazy town, but this seems to have hurt them significantly in 2018 and 2022. I don’t think the coverage of MTG’s ultrastupid mouth is helping the GOP in any way. Last night, Laura Ingraham was working hard to spin MTG’s moronic comments about a “national divorce” (again, my mom has this shit on–I don’t really want to watch it!).

Ah, but here’s the thing: Trump maxed out that anger. No one can channel it as well as he, and he himself can’t channel it anywhere as powerfully as he once did. MAGA is not moving forward. It can’t.

I think you’re quite wrong there. They will all snap into allegiance with the winner. The GOP is tremendous at that.

I certainly hope you’re right.

My gut tells me that the GOP has learnt a lot from 2020 and 2022. Trump is (mainly) poison, and this cost a lot of seats in 2022 since there was still a lot “No Trumpists!” votes. Election denial in particular seemed to coincide with losing (not completely of course). By 2024, the 2020 election will be old news and I don’t think the Republican nominees will focus on it, and certainly the leadership will be telling them not to go there.

But the anti-woke, culture war, pwn the libs is (I think) a winning strategy. It doesn’t matter how insane it is, in some ways the more insane the better. DeSantis is going as fascist as we’ve seen in American politics since the 1940s in Florida. Not only is this not drawing criticism, but the right is cheering it on and saying DeSantis is their man.

This is one of those times when I would be oh so very happy to be 100% totally wrong. MTG to me is the thing that really surprises me. Her getting political power is shocking, and says a lot.

I think it’s meaningful because Biden didn’t just squeak by in the EC or end up underwater as Trump did in 2016. He had genuine popular support, and people know this fact and are influenced by it. Further, his popular vote total is one metric by which to gauge future success. (E.g., 538 uses national polls in their aggregate; if these were meaningless, they wouldn’t.)

Thank you. I wonder what the predicted effect of the Georgia changes is, and is there anything as big going on in other states?

Also, this kind of thing pisses off Black and other minority voters, as well as white people who don’t like unfair bullshit. These changes can also be mitigated by GOTV and other efforts. I find it despicable and frustrating, but we do not need to assume passively that the changes will have their desired effects.

That could happen. But I’m betting Trump is too petty to support it, and his core followers too deep in MAGA. We don’t have experience seeing what Trump does when he loses the nomination but we have seen how he acts when he loses the general election. It’s not pretty.

Ah, right. Yes, DeSantis is much, much stronger in this area.

I think that Democrats could have done even better without the unproductive “defund the police” rhetoric, so I agree with you on that. But we don’t have to speculate in the future tense here, since we had very good midterms in 2018, won the presidential election in 2020 (and both houses of Congress), and then blasted through negative expectations for 2022. I don’t see how you negatively extrapolate from that into 2024. Things look good.

Of course, he won’t have Fox News pushing a “stolen primary” narrative like they did with “Stop the Steal” in 2020; they’ll back the GOP nominee and continue marginalizing Trump. Though maybe OAN will back Trump and peel away some of his supporters.

Oh I think you’re correct. Fox et al. will propagandize on behalf of whoever is the candidate. That’s a big advantage. But if that candidate doesn’t instill passion in the base and drive voter turnout, I don’t see why the GOP will win in 2024.

Unfortunately yes. There is a very big national campaign they’re running to try to steal elections. Voter suppression is only a piece of it. If you’re not familiar, read about Project REDMAP which is another piece:

I also watched a documentary on Netflix which you can also watch for free on YouTube, which discusses a lot of these tactics:

They’re not done. :frowning:

Fuuuck. I will check it out, thanks!