Does DeSantis need to start attacking Trump more? Kind of.

This is a delicate dance, as I have said several times in the past week. That is not even so much because attacking Trump is often for Republicans the equivalent of detonating a bunch of TNT directly in front of their faces. It’s because every time you mention him, he gets free press. Free press (AKA earned media) correlates strongly with electoral outcomes. He’s been getting enough free press lately— and not the kind that actually turns Republican primary voters off of him (insane though that may seem to many of you). Why help him get more? …

At the end of the day, even if he talks about abortion and transgender teens all night, if DeSantis gets more face time than anyone else and appears generally competent, capable of stringing a sentence together without sounding like a space alien or a guy reading talking points straight off of index cards, he’ll probably move his numbers up a little and Trump’s floor down a little, at least in Iowa. But we are running out of time and “a little” is just not going to cut it soon, probably meaning October 15.