Listless vessels
Yesterday Ron DeSantis referred to Trump’s most loyal supporters as “listless vessels,” implying that they’re hopelessly devoted to Trump and that they can’t think for themselves. Why would DeSantis say such a thing? Well, he’s desperate. His 2024 Republican primary numbers are bottoming out, and so now he has to take risks if he wants to find a way to get back in the game. Still, it’s set off quite a bit of controversy. How can DeSantis win over Trump’s base if he’s insulting them like this?
It’s simple: DeSantis doesn’t need Trump’s base. As I’ve been pointing out for a very long time, Trump’s base is not a group that decides elections. They’re simply not large enough.
Polling says that roughly half of 2024 Republican primary voters are currently aligned with Trump. Given that some of the people picking Trump in polling are only doing so because they perceive him as their party’s frontrunner, it means that Trump’s actual core support base is much smaller than half of the Republican primary voting base. Trump’s base might make up thirty percent of the Republican primary voting base at most. And while they may indeed never abandon Trump, it means the other 70% of the Republican primary voting base is up for grabs in 2024.
Ron DeSantis is a dummy with very little political savvy, but even he appears to understand that the key to winning the 2024 Republican nomination isn’t to pander to Trump’s base. It’s to play to the other 70% of Republican primary voters, who are actually going to decide who the nominee is. One way to do that is to call out Trump’s base for the dunderheads that they are, and convince the other 70% of primary voters that they need to rally around another candidate so that Trump’s base can’t forfeit the election by nominating a guy who’s going to prison.
DeSantis is hopelessly falling like a rock, and it’s far too late for him to turn things around. But DeSantis is now finally putting his finger on a strategy that could have helped him a year or two ago, if he’d had the savvy (and the guts) to try it back when his own candidacy was still viable. At this point he just sounds like a sore loser.
That said, this serves to underscore the mathematical reality that the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is still up for grabs. All it would take is for one candidate to gain momentum and consolidate the roughly 50% of Republican primary voters who already say they want someone other than Trump, and then use that momentum to pick off some of the 50% support that Trump currently has. I’m not saying it will or won’t happen. I’m just pointing out that it easily could end up happening, an it’s easy to see how it could happen.
Sadly for Ron DeSantis (and mercifully for America), he appears to already be toast. The guy never did have any political savvy. DeSantis was never anything more than a ratings-driven media creation, and the minute he was forced to stand on his own, he predictably faltered. The irony is that even a dummy like DeSantis can see the one thing that the media refuses to admit: Trump’s base is only a small fraction of the Republican primary voting base. The key to winning the 2024 Republican primary nomination is not to coddle them, but to work around them. On his way down, DeSantis may have just laid out the roadmap for someone else to eventually step in and take the Republican nomination from Trump.
