The Realignment: Why DeSantis Can't Win and the End of a Confusing Subscription Experiment
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Why Governor DeSantis Won’t Win the GOP Nomination
Everyone hates making predictions. However, considering the number of questions Saagar and I have been getting about DeSantis vs. Trump, I’ll make one here: Ron DeSantis won’t be the Republican nominee for president in 2024.
The cliche about Democrats and Republicans used to be “Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line.”
But speaking of realignments, the love vs fall in line dynamic has inverted between the two parties. Once Donald Trump rode down the NYC escalator in 2015, a sizable portion of the Republican Party’s base, especially the portion most likely to vote in party primaries, fell in love with him.
By contrast—despite concerns about President Joe Biden’s age, the almost-certain truth that most (if not all) ambitious Democrats with presidential ambitions think they are more up for the job come 2025, and various political fractures in the party—Biden will be the nominee. Other than Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr., no one has taken the primary challenge bait.
The modern Democratic Party is a coalition of voters, interest groups, institutions, and individuals with sole unifying goal of holding onto the presidency in 2024. President Biden holds onto the nomination because he is seen as the most electable candidate in the party’s stable. Electability is the watchword. If Biden had led the party into a disastrous 2022 midterms, one would expect the talk of a primary challenge to heat up. If Biden had won in 2016 but lost a re-election battle to Trump in 2020, there would be no energy for his return as a candidate in 2024. (See: John Kerry and Al Gore)
The Republican Party is not driven by the same motivations. To oversimplify, a huge portion of the party is driven by its desire to support Trump, no matter the consequences in 2024 and beyond. That reality leaves a huge portion of arguments in favor of DeSantis—Trump’s toxicity to swing voters, the impact of January 6th, the possibility of an administration that followed Trump’s priorities and “owned libs” without the drama and incompetence—ineffective.
Things could have turned out differently if the 21st century American political system was constructed differently. Before the tumult of the 1960s and the post-Watergate reforms of the 1970s, local political bosses and state and national leaders exerted an overwhelming amount of control over a party’s political nominee. Party primaries, if they happened at all, weren’t the ultimate determinant of who made it to the stage in November. Theodore Roosevelt won more Republican primaries in 1912 than William Howard Taft. It didn’t matter. Roosevelt lost at the summer convention (and chose to launch his doomed Bull Moose third party candidacy, throwing the presidency to Woodrow Wilson).
From a reform perspective, an open-primary system, superdelegates, and other alternative electoral models could have reduced the power of Trump’s base over the final choice.
Given the motivations of the Republican Party’s base and the party elite’s lack of control, it would have taken a candidate with the talent capable of taking the attention and “love” of the base back. Governing as the leading light of the “Trumpism without Trump” movement, waging wars on woke corporations, and winning the state of Florida by an overwhelming margin during an underwhelming midterms aren’t enough.
Some political environments favor the inherent talents and backgrounds of specific candidates. Not only has Trump altered the policy prerogatives of the Republican Party, but he has shifted the way it considers its nominees, from the national to the state and local level. DeSantis is prepared to win over a party that’s ready to fall in line. He isn’t prepared to make anyone fall in love with him. Not when the original object of one’s affection (Trump) is still willing and able to reciprocate.
A follow up post will cover the broader “lost generation” of politicians unable to surmount the challenge of Biden and Trump.
New Changes to the Realignment’s Substack/Supercast
OK…I can take a hint.
Yesterday afternoon, a friend texted me the following:
The Substack marketing situation is very confusing. You have to internalize details of your partnership agreement with Saagar to understand the Realignment product landscape.
That, combined with the countless daily emails from listeners, has forced me to conclude that maintaining a separate Substack and Supercast is just too complicated.
Life lesson: Sometimes trying to make things simple ends up making things more difficult. (And it definitely doesn’t help that Substack and Supercast sound similar.)
From now on, one subscription $5 a month/$50 a year paid subscription will get you a the podcast and the newsletter.
This week, I’m going to work to find a way to merge the subscriptions together so that subscribers to the newsletter and the podcast will receive both. If you subscribed to the newsletter and the podcast separately, I’ll refund one of them.
Last Week’s Paid Episode
Last Friday, I published a special edition of our Supercast subscriber Ask Me Anything.
You can preview the episode here. The full audio is available at our Supercast page.
Last Week’s Free Episodes
#360 | Renu Mukherjee: The End of Affirmative Action and the Future of Higher Education
#359 | Jacob Helberg: The Geopolitics of the Great U.S.-China Tech Decoupling
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If you purchase a book using our link, the show gets a 10% commission, a local, independent bookseller gets support, and you get an awesome book!
What We’re Reading: 2023 Edition
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