Did Ronald Reagan have to debate Republicans in 1984? Did George W. Bush show up to primary debates in 2004? Donald Trump used the first example in his interview yesterday on Fox to argue that no one should expect him to show up to any primary debates in this cycle. That’s especially true, Trump argued, when polls show him running away with the nomination.

Those arguments have a couple of gaping holes, of course, but they’re not altogether wrong either:

MARIA BARTIROMO: I want to begin with the state of play of this election, with now the election over a year away and the first GOP primary debate a month or so away. Will you be on that stage? Are you participating in the upcoming debate?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, it’s a — quite an easy question normally. Ronald Reagan didn’t do it, and a lot of other people didn’t do it. When you have a big lead, you don’t do it.

And we have a lead of 50 and 60 points in some cases, and some of these people are at zero. Ron DeSanctis, as I call him, or DeSanctimonious, is down to — he’s in the teens now, and I’m at 50 and 60 and 65, and even I saw one today at 70.

And so you’re leading people by 50 and 60 points, and you say, why would you be doing a debate? It’s not — it’s actually not fair. Why would you let somebody that’s at zero or at one or two or three be popping you with questions?

BARTIROMO: Well, I mean, do you see any risk that, if you don’t show up, Ron DeSantis has a good night, and it cuts into your lead?

TRUMP: Or somebody else has a good night and cuts into his lead, because that’s what’s happening. He’s going down, and a couple of them are going up.

Ahem. That’s not the state of the race, not regarding Trump, DeSantis, or anyone else — although Trump’s correct in the sense that his lead is pretty stable. So is DeSantis’ in the not-Trump lane, a point that media narrative-writers and the Trump campaign don’t like to acknowledge. The aggregate average picture at RCP hasn’t changed for months, as I wrote last week, and that’s even more true over the last 30 days:

No one’s making a move in the second tier yet, let alone coming close to DeSantis. To the extent that anyone’s gaining at all, Vivek Ramaswamy has tied Mike Pence for a very distant third place. As for Trump, he’s scoring between 48% and 59% in the last 30 days; if we go back to the beginning of May, before DeSantis’ official entry, Trump’s range expands slightly in both directions to 43%-62%. He’s not getting 65% or 70%, and most consistently lands in the low 50s.

That matters for Trump’s main point, which is that “it’s actually not fair” to expect him to debate at all. The comparison to Reagan is purposefully inaccurate; Reagan was, of course, an incumbent president at the time running for re-election. Let’s not forget that Reagan did debate in the 1980 cycle, where his “I’m paying for this microphone!” moment helped propel him over George H. W. Bush for the nomination.

Trump is not an incumbent, which he obviously understands, but it’s clear that he thinks he should be treated as an incumbent by his party with a free pass to the nomination. Trump appears to be basing that on two points: his status as a former incumbent in 2020, as well as polling leads now. But neither of those are terribly convincing, especially the argument as a former incumbent. He’s a former incumbent because he lost the election in 2020, whether he wants to admit it or not, against the same Joe Biden who will run for re-election in a country that usually favors incumbent first-termers. That in itself would recommend a competitive test for Trump in this cycle before the party commits itself to him for a re-run.

Let’s accept, for the sake of argument, Trump’s implied claim to be the incumbent in this cycle. Strategically, he’s right that debating against people at 0-3% in the polling would put him at risk, but not everyone’s at 0-3%. DeSantis, for example, is polling around 20% consistently, and the rest of the field adds up to nearly half of the GOP primary vote.

These polls and that split show why Trump should be debating. On the other side, the current incumbent Joe Biden still has an aggregate 63.5% support and actually does get upward of 70% support in individual polls from his party’s primary voters, despite his incompetency and arguable cognitive deficiencies. Trump’s barely clearing half among GOP primary voters; if Trump were still in office as an incumbent, that would be a signal of oncoming disaster.

Some Democrats, in fact, worry that the 63.5% is a signal of disaster if Biden has to run against anyone not named Trump, because it shows a fatigue among Biden’s voters. If that’s the case, what does Trump’s 53.8% over the last 30 days (with a high of 56.3% in May) tell us? If Ronald Reagan had this little support as an incumbent in 1984, you’d better believe he would have faced a meaningful primary challenge — and he would have shown up to debate to shore up his support, too.

Once again, this data shows why the media narratives largely miss the point. Republican voters have to choose whether to stick with the same “incumbent” as in 2020, or to change directions. The race will be static for a while as voters sort that out. Trump could possibly win the nomination by skating by on his polling of the moment and counting on the race remaining static all the way through the process, while his opposition splits the non-Trump vote. But Trump will have done nothing to engage with nearly half the party, which would likely result in a loss of engagement in the general election — and with a much larger share of his party than Biden risks with his own.

The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:

• Has Bidenomics succeeded or failed? Peter Grandich joins us to discuss the question, but Peter worries more about the impact of the BRIC nations as they emerge.
• We also talk about the crisis in confidence with the DoJ, FBI, and now the Secret Service on the rule of law.
• Is the biggest divide in American politics really GOP v Democrats or insider v outsider?

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!