If former President Donald Trump doesn’t join the other major Republican presidential candidates at the first debate next week, the spotlight will still shine on one of the biggest stories of the 2024 race.
The prevailing storyline is Trump’s continued dominance, despite a slew of legal problems. But the subplot of the race is the failure of the other GOP candidates to launch.
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Nowhere is that clearer than in the case of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), now nearly 40 points behind Trump in the national RealClearPolitics polling average and below 20% in the critical early states.
DeSantis was supposed to compete with Trump on something like even terms. He was one of the few Republican leaders who came out of the midterm elections stronger than he entered, presiding over an actual red wave in the erstwhile battleground state of Florida, once known for its hanging chads. But after a long buildup to his campaign announcement as he waited for the Sunshine State legislative session to conclude, much of that momentum has been lost.
Now he has Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) nipping at his heels in Iowa, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doing the same in New Hampshire, and Vivek Ramaswamy closing in on him in at least some national polls.
Trump makes fun of DeSantis as a standard line in his stump speech even in staid settings like state Republican fundraising dinners. The partisan crowd laughs along as Trump tells the tale of endorsing a Florida congressman for governor in 2018 only to have “that son of a bitch” turn around and run against him.
DeSantis’s team on Friday likened this stage of the race to the second inning of a baseball game. If so, the rest of the field will need this one to go into extra innings.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Christie, and Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) are all reliably in the single digits, candidates who might be in the top tier in a normal cycle. The latest Fox News poll has as many primary contenders at 0% as in double digits.
If Trump follows through on skipping the Republican National Committee debate, the key will be whether any of these candidates can thrive in his absence. Trump suspects that without the oxygen only he can provide by getting on that stage in Milwaukee, they will all suffocate.
A second or third candidate becoming competitive is not sufficient to defeat Trump, based on the past history of other strong front-runners. George H.W. Bush lost Iowa in 1988 but recovered to win the nomination. Bob Dole and George W. Bush both lost New Hampshire. John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Trump in 2016 all lost Iowa and rebounded.
So even if one of the candidates in Milwaukee can make it a race, there is no guarantee they would beat Trump. They are trying to erase a larger deficit than any winning candidate has ever overcome.
President Joe Biden came back from a near-death political experience to win the Democratic nomination in 2020. But the candidates ahead of him didn’t have the type of lead Trump has, nor had they led the party for eight years.
McCain came back from a similarly precarious position to win in 2008. But Rudy Giuliani’s lead was smaller, and he bypassed the early states because unlike Trump, he wasn’t winning them. McCain, Giuliani, Romney, and Fred Thompson were all top-tier candidates who were seen as having a chance to win going into the primaries.
Bill Clinton was originally a second-tier candidate in 1992. But the entire top tier ahead of him took a pass on the race, assuming the Persian Gulf War victory made Bush unbeatable.
Jimmy Carter came back after trailing Ted Kennedy in 1980. But he was the incumbent president.
Trump is attempting to run as a quasi-incumbent. So far, it is working.
Another candidate is going to have to show between the first debate and when the first votes are cast that they can alter that dynamic.
Yes, it is early. But if Trump wasn’t facing indictments in four separate cases, it might already be too late.
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A candidate other than Trump is going to need to show they are ready to launch.
If not in Milwaukee, it is hard to see when.
