Will DeSantis’ First GOP Primary Debate Win Change The Race?

The general Trumpworld consensus around last Wednesday night’s GOP primary debate, mainly as laid out by Florida Rep. Byron Donalds during Fox News post-debate analysis, seems to be that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had a solid enough performance but failed to dominate and thus didn’t move the needle in any meaningful way.

It’s a ridiculously unfair cope, of course. In a field of eight, it’s tough to hit a home run, especially when the other candidates aren’t directly targeting you and giving you a chance to rebut anything. Which is interesting in and of itself. Of the people on that stage, DeSantis was the front-runner. As such, I thought going in that everyone would be taking shots at him. They didn’t, which means they either purposefully didn’t want him to be able to rebut anything, or they simply couldn’t think of anything of substance with which to attack. Either way, that’s good.

Still, it all resulted in a performance filled with plenty of singles, doubles, and even triples but no home runs. And that’s perfectly fine. The goal was to survive and advance at a minimum, avoid any negative headlines, and, if things went well, be able to build a case that he ‘won’ the debate. He did all those things. Even better, the case that he won was bolstered by a primary Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight, and Ipsos poll of GOP voters that declared him the winner.

As a DeSantis supporter, I’ll take that and run. It’s a great launching pad for more significant and even better things to come. Remember, this primary is just getting started, and last week represented the unofficial beginning of a grinding campaign season. We’ve got a LONG way to go until actual voting begins in Iowa, which is already polling closer than it was before the debate. And if the opinions of this Fox News focus group coming out of the critical swing state of Wisconsin are any indication, things are trending in the right direction.

Contrast that with the competing event that was supposed to dominate not just the internet, but the overall news cycle, the interview of Donald Trump conducted by Tucker Carlson. As the hours and days passed after the debate, the buzz from that softball interview seemed little to nonexistent. Other than some weird exchange about Jeffrey Epstein, do you remember anything even remotely newsworthy? I don’t, though I figured that it would be filled with plenty of the usual bitching and moaning, so many of us have grown sick and tired of.

Trump influencers on Twitter (now X, but I can barely stand to call it that), loudly proclaimed that the interview got 1,000 gazillion views or something. Except, the interview likely garnered fewer actual watchers - people who were engaged for more than a minute or two on a social media feed - than the GOP primary debate on Fox News, which actually vastly exceeded ratings expectations. I know they want to convince us that scrolling past something on one’s Twitter feed and having it play for two seconds is the same as tuning in to watch a televised event, but it’s not even remotely close. And one can hardly pin the success of the video on Trump’s popularity when much of the viewership occurred because Elon Musk shared it and posted about it several times.

Sadly, yet another Trump arrest, with a mugshot this time, ended what was the first solid news cycle for DeSantis in a long while. He’ll get the usual bump that oddly comes from stuff like that, but that could likely be Trump’s high point. From here on out, the future seems likely to be a series of bad things for the ex-president.

What does that future look like? I can give you a pretty good idea, and I don’t even need a crystal ball. Fundraising, already struggling and being diminished by overwhelmingly large legal bills, will begin to dry up. Endless court appearances will make it difficult, if not impossible, to campaign effectively. There will be a few huge rallies, but they will be carefully placed and much less regular than the last two campaign cycles. As is typical for octogenarians, Trump’s speed, wit, and overall health will continue to decline. The skip in his step is already gone, and it will only become more evident as time goes by. Finally, by the time the primaries are over and the general election campaigns begin - assuming he makes it that far - the former president will likely be a convicted felon, meaning he could be on house arrest or even in prison before November 2024.On the other end, DeSantis has plenty of upcoming opportunities to win over voters, starting with next month’s second debate and a November showdown with California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Keep doing well, and the future is bright. There is a long way to go, and by no means am I predicting a Trump primary defeat, but, as I’ve stated many times, it’s not over, and that possibility is still very much in play. And DeSantis winning the first GOP debate was a crucial first step.

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