The State of the 2024 Race: Where We Are and Where We Are Heading
Things are shaping up and we'd better take notice
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took a break this week from burning through his millions upon millions of dollars to lay off a third of his campaign staff. It was yet another dismal moment in a long line of dismal moments for DeSantis, who entered the race with a resounding thud and demonstrated for the country that his fated run for the presidency was built on the fact that most people had never had the displeasure to actually hear him talk.
DeSantis is one of the worst retail politicians many of us have ever seen. He lacks an ability to talk to other human beings in a way that makes an observer wonder if he’s ever actually done it before. It’s now apparent, after years spent lording over crews of over-matched Floridian reporters, that DeSantis is a paper tiger with a brittle glass jaw, a mirage of power and authority that was aided by a sycophantic legislature, a cowed media, and a lack of resistance from the state’s Democratic Party and the national body. In other words, a failure who should have been defeated and put in his place a long, long time ago.
His flop has sent ripples through the political world, leaving observers to scratch their heads and look for alternatives to Donald Trump as the nominee. Rupert Murdoch, who has never particularly liked Trump but countenanced him as a weapon, is looking for Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin to jump in the fray. A Draft-Brian-Kemp movement was swatted down almost immediately as the Georgia governor ruled out a run and more than likely set his sights on running for the Senate. In a bizarre twist of desperation, some have even started looking at Vivek Ramaswamy, a political nothing whose run is predicated more on raising his media visibility than anything else, as a potential spoiler, which is eerily reminiscent of the 2012 primary phenomenon in which everybody from Ben Carson to Newt Gingrich was trotted out as an alternative to Mitt Romney, the nominee absolutely nobody wanted.
All of this is taking taking shape about a month out from the first Republican debate on August 23rd, an affair that probably won’t move many dials as Trump has hinted he doesn’t plan on participating, leaving the field a chunk of time to stand in front of the electorate and probably answer questions about Donald Trump. Already it feels like a fait accompli that Trump, despite a mountain of indictments and a whole host of known baggage, will be the nominee. And all that’s left to sort out is how that will happen and what shape it will take. Meanwhile, the other wannabes will be out there in the public, talking about Trump, answering questions about Trump, deciding whether to attack him in absentia or choosing to pathetically bend the knee as the only strategy.
These are trying times.
We’re facing a campaign by a disgraced former president that is largely centered on that man attempting to keep himself out of prison. The race itself is shaped by him, his legal troubles, and the radicalization he has both embodied and furthered with every opening of his mouth. We need to take a long, hard look at what the next year and a half of our political lives might look like in order to steel ourselves and prepare.
Here’s what I’m looking at as the 2024 Election begins to take shape and some thoughts on what we need to do in preparation.