Over the last week, the two frontrunners competing to be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024, former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, employed two different sets of tactics while out on the campaign trail.
Trump remains the leader in polling advantage among Republican would-be voters, but a new poll out this past weekend by NBC News of general election swing state voters choosing between a hypothetical Biden V. Trump rematch and a Biden V. DeSantis race ought to raise some eyebrows.
The legal challenges Trump faces seem to have boosted his polling among GOP primary voters, with Trump leading DeSantis 51-22%, but if you look a little deeper into the numbers, including the all-important swing state races, which always decide presidential elections, the numbers are stunning.
It’s worth noting that Ron DeSantis beats Biden by 6 points in swing states and is tied with him in the popular vote per today’s NBC News poll.
That’s an electoral college win and a chance for Republicans to win the popular vote for the first time in a generation. https://t.co/edGdLKaGDE pic.twitter.com/AhQpUxFAVR
— Giancarlo Sopo (@GiancarloSopo) June 25, 2023
In swing states, Trump would lose to Joe Biden by four points, while DeSantis would beat Biden in those same states, by six. So given that backdrop, how are the two campaigns actually operating?
Ron DeSantis spoke at the Faith and Freedom Coalition banquet in Washington, D.C. on Friday. Here’s just a bit of what he had to say.
DeSantis then went to Eagle Pass, TX, and toured what’s going on at the border with Fox News’ Bill Melugin.
NEW: I am with GOP presidential candidate/FL Gov. @RonDeSantis as he receives a boat tour of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, TX. Within a matter of minutes, we came across multiple groups of migrants in the process of crossing illegally, or being blocked by TX after crossing. pic.twitter.com/Hj1NF8blJY
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) June 26, 2023
Meanwhile, Never Back Down, the PAC supporting DeSantis, continues to knock on doors in early primary and caucus states, something no other campaign has done in any measurable numbers. The DeSantis ground game is not only stood up, but in force and making impressions with voters before other candidates even name their media teams.
So if one donates to Team DeSantis, there’s a high likelihood that that donation will either go towards commercials being run in early states, or to help fund the ground game. And that includes ballot harvesting, much to the chagrin of Democrats, who want to be the only ones employing that strategy in a general election.
Contrast that with former President Trump, who went on Seb Gorka’s show last Thursday and downplayed ballot harvesting, saying he’s already got all the votes he needs.
Looking back at that swing state poll, I’m here to tell you that even if NBC is wrong, Trump still does not have all the votes he needs. DeSantis is up six in that poll, and I still wouldn’t be comfortable in this climate to say that’s enough votes right now.
Trump also spoke at the Faith and Freedom Coalition dinner, saying this.
Pretty boilerplate for Trump, but not much else policy-wise except bluster. I want the battle to be against Democrats, not those specifically attacking Trump. Solving Trump’s legal problems isn’t going to fix the debt, build a wall, beef up the military, or get wokeness tamed in this country. Lots of promises, though. He’ll end the Ukraine war before even becoming president. He’ll tell China they have 48 hours to leave Cuba or else be tariffed within an inch of their lives.
Trump then went to Michigan, and said a couple of things worth comment. First, on his legal woes.
Actually, I’m not convinced of that at all. I think Trump is such a lightning rod, he’d be pursued by the left all the way to the grave, such is their hatred of him. But then he said this.
No, this isn’t the final battle. If he were to win, Democrats are going to say, “Well, we got beat fair and square, I guess we’d better let him do his thing for four years?” The battle only intensifies. Every single day of a Trump presidency II would be split, at best, 50-50 between actual governance/policy decisions and fighting off legal battles.
And speaking of legal battles, late last week at Bedminster, former President Trump said he’d been contacted by the best firms and the greatest lawyers in the world offering to defend him. What did Trump say in response to such requests? No thanks.
He’s got this. He doesn’t need expert legal counsel. He can beat these phony raps all by himself. Who needs attorneys? Except then, there’s this.
Facing multiple intensifying investigations, former President Donald J. Trump has quietly begun diverting more of the money he is raising away from his 2024 presidential campaign and into a political action committee that he has used to pay his personal legal fees.
The change, which went unannounced except in the fine print of his online disclosures, raises fresh questions about how Mr. Trump is paying for his mounting legal bills — which could run into millions of dollars — as he prepares for at least two criminal trials, and whether his PAC, Save America, is facing a financial crunch.
When Mr. Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign in November, for every dollar raised online, 99 cents went to his campaign, and a penny went to Save America.
But internet archival records show that sometime in February or March, he adjusted that split. Now his campaign’s share has been reduced to 90 percent of donations, and 10 percent goes to Save America.
So now we’re only committing 90% of resources into Trump to beat Joe Biden in the fall. The rest of the money coming in is being spent to defend against the legal storm, the storm that Trump says he doesn’t need outside help fighting.
So if the D.C. grand jury investigating J6 comes back and supports another indictment, and then Georgia follows with another indictment in the post-2020 nonsense, making four separate legal battles Trump would be facing simultaneously while still trying to run a campaign for the nomination and eventual rematch against an incumbent president, what will the ratio be then? 80-20? 70-30? What’s the percent of campaign donations actually going to legal defense where is actually becomes grift instead of gift?
I don’t care how old, feeble, senile, corrupt, feckless, or reckless Joe Biden is. Regime media is still backing him. There were visible cracks last week after the House Ways and Means press conference showing just how corrupt Biden, Inc. is, but thankfully, the Russia non-coup came along as an exquisitely-timed distraction so that the protection racket of the Democratic president by the Democratic media can continue. Biden will still be hard to beat. Whoever the Republican nominee eventually is, 100% of time, energy, and resources will have go into beating the Democrats. Donald Trump can’t devote 100% now. Not now, nor any time in the foreseeable future will he be able to give 100%, so long as Democrats pursue him. And there will never be a day they don’t pursue him.
If you want to live to see the day when Trump quits getting attacked unjustly by the government, you might just want to employ a little strategery of your own and figure out the best possible person who can actually win an election in the swing states, and win larger numbers of suburban women, independents, Latinos and African-Americans in a general election, and not lose the seniors. Donald Trump has a track record with all those groups, most recently in 2020. It wasn’t pretty. He got crushed. Ron DeSantis has a track record with these groups as well, albeit only in Florida, in 2022. He’s the one who did the crushing.
If you’re focused on winning, you’re winning. If you’re focused on “Ada” Hutchinson and the fat guy in your campaign videos, I’m wondering just how hard you’re actually trying to win.
