Aside from an occasional rally, Trump has spent most of his time as a declared candidate posting on social media, traveling between Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago, and navigating court appearances. Even during his unconventional 2016 campaign, he held more rallies and participated in all but one of the primary debates.

It’s possible that none of this matters. Trump is crushing the field in polls. He is a known quantity who has the ability to generate publicity on a daily basis. He could always do a flurry of campaign events close to the time of actual voting.

But traditionally, voters, especially in early states, demand a lot of attention from candidates.

[To put the issue into perspective, NRO’s Brittany Bernstein counted up the in-person events for each of the declared candidates. Trump has held less than 40 over almost ten months of candidacy; DeSantis has had 78 since jumping into the race three months ago. Ramaswamy has 105, the most, while Haley has had 88, and even Tim Scott has 41 under his belt.

Of course, Trump has legal issues taking up his time now, but that doesn’t explain why he’s making so few personal appearances on the campaign trail. And even that excuse raises a key issue for GOP voters: if Trump can’t campaign now in a competitive primary while these cases go through preliminaries, how can he be relied on to campaign hard in a general election a year from now? — Ed]