Notes from the Middleground

Notes from the Middleground

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Notes from the Middleground
Notes from the Middleground
Trump, DeSantis, and the Also Republicans, Revisited
Eyes on the Right

Trump, DeSantis, and the Also Republicans, Revisited

How the GOP primary contest is shaping up

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Damon Linker
Jun 08, 2023
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Notes from the Middleground
Notes from the Middleground
Trump, DeSantis, and the Also Republicans, Revisited
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Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks at a town-hall-style event at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College on June 06, 2023. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Four months ago, I wrote a pair of posts about the nascent 2024 Republican race for president. The first looked at former president Donald Trump and current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and concluded that the contest was Trump’s to lose. The second was titled “The Also Republicans” and assessed the prospects of everyone else who seemed poised to run, finding few if any of them likely to make a big impact. Now that we have an actual field of Also Republicans, I thought it would be a good moment to revisit both posts in a single new one.

How much has changed since early February 2023? Is Trump still the favorite? Does DeSantis have any hope of catching him? Do any of the Also Republicans have a shot? Let’s think it through….

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The Orange (Jumpsuit?) Frontrunner

I learned an important, seemingly obvious lesson in punditry during the second half of 2015 and first half of 2016: The candidate in the polling lead is winning. Not the candidate you can imagine ending up in the lead after several possible events unfold in just the right way. Not the candidate you think might be able to win an upset victory in Iowa or New Hampshire, thereby setting up a string of even more remote wins in later primaries and caucuses. Nope, the candidate who’s ahead is winning, full stop.

Trump was winning in July 2015. He was winning in September 2015. He was winning in December 2015. He was winning in February 2016. And he won in late May 2016. Aside from a couple of weeks in early November 2015 when Ben Carson caught up to and briefly matched Trump in the polls, the latter held the lead. Yes, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Governor John Kasich, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had their surges in February, March, and April of 2016, but as they rose in the polls, Trump rose higher. It really was that simple.

In comparison to how events unfolded eight years ago, things today look much more settled: Trump has a consistent, commanding lead. Of course, the prospect of a new indictment far more serious than the one handed down in New York City on March 30 places a question mark over Trump’s campaign at the moment—though the aggregate GOP primary polling graph at RealClearPolitics tells a powerful story about Trump’s remarkable capacity to spin his legal troubles into political gold. We simply don’t yet know for sure what the consequences of a new indictment for the Trump campaign will be. In the meantime, the former president is the clear frontrunner by a mile.

The problem with DeSantis’ plan, quite obviously, is that fortune favors the bold, and he’s following a passive strategy that involves waiting around for Trump to collapse.

The Leading Trump-Replacer

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