From a Firing Line interview with Charlie Sykes:
HOOVER: So, Charlie, what happens in a general election then if it is Trump versus Biden?
SYKES: Then I think the election becomes a referendum on Donald Trump. And I think this is the decision the Republicans have to make.
HOOVER: A referendum on Trump?
SYKES: Yes, because I think under normal circumstances the general election is a referendum on the incumbent president. And if it’s any other Republican other than Donald Trump, the 2024 election will be a referendum on Joe Biden and his record and his agenda. But if it’s Donald Trump, it becomes completely reversed. That election becomes about Donald Trump. And that will determine what the turnout is. That will determine the levels of enthusiasm. Joe Biden does not need to gin up enthusiasm among the Democratic base if Donald Trump is on the ballot. The formula shifts.
This is another way of making the point I argued in my earlier piece Why I Prefer Trump 1. If DeSantis runs, it's a referendum on Biden, and Biden is more likely to lose for all the reasons his approval ratings are so low now. It will seem more like a normal election. If Trump runs, it's a referendum on Trump, and it's far more likely that he will lose because most voters, if they are not disgusted by him, are tired of him. He's a known quantity now. Biden as a known quantity should defeat Trump as a known quantity. Biden against DeSantis? Not so clear. For the typical swing voter, DeSantis is still an unknown quantity.
So is Trump worse than DeSantis? That's not the important question. They are both sociopaths, and we just don't know how bad DeSantis is yet. And in the short run, that's his primary advantage in the general election. To the swing voter, he's seems kinda normal. The people in Florida seem to love him. Liberal media hate him, so how bad can he be? He's young. He's new and fresh. He has a pretty wife and kids. He's kind of Kennedyesque if you don't look to closely. Let's give him a try.
But the problem is neither Trump nor DeSantis–it's MAGA. Both Trump and DeSantis in their different ways are human ciphers who are vying with one another to get out in front of the MAGA parade. If, as I believe, the enemy is not Trump or DeSantis or any one personality, but MAGA, it doesn't really matter who leads it because nobody is really leading it. Anyone who wins with MAGA support will be a Kevin McCarthy-like creature of MAGA. Nothing is more important than crushing and delegitimating MAGA through the electoral process.
If you think that DeSantis represents a more acceptable version of MAGA than Trump, you really don't get it. If anything, he's the next evolutionary step in its emergence from the slime. If MAGA wins the White House in '24, America as an open society is very likely over. So the really important question is not who's worse, DeSantis or Trump–or anybody else who wins with MAGA support–but who is more likely to deliver a victory for MAGA in the general election, and that is the MAGA candidate who can win in the swing states.
I'm not saying that Trump can't win, but extreme MAGA has been a loser in the last two cycles. DeSantis has a far better chance of winning because he appears less blatantly MAGA to swing voters, many of whom have come to see the Democrats as having lost their minds on gender issues. Most swing voters are normies, and they tend to agree with DeSantis on sex and gender issues. Democrats and those influenced by the cosmopolitanism of Liberal media are so caught up in their own sanctimony that they have no clue how much they scare normies on these issues, and how easy they are making it for Republicans to frame the election as normies vs kooks.
This is largely what the last election was about, and that's why Biden won. He was perceived to be the normie and Trump the kook. Will that be true again if Biden runs against DeSantis? I don't think so–at least insofar as the Dems allow themselves to be framed as the anti-normie party. It's in this sense that DeSantis will be able to make the general election a referendum on Biden and the anti-normie Democrats in a way that Trump would not be able to do.
So "lucky" for us, Trump is the more likely GOP candidate in the general. It will be another circus, but he likely loses again in an election that I believe will be framed again as kooks vs. normies. His mounting legal troubles might help him with the MAGA base to secure the nomination, but they will not help him with swing voters in the general. The swing voters have already rejected him, and there's no reason so far to believe they won't do it again. DeSantis, on the other hand looks a lot more like Youngkin, a GOP winner in a state that was trending blue, and there's good reason to believe that he will get much of the national purple vote–certainly more than Trump would do.
That's why DeSantis scares me far more than Trump does. Trump was the wrecking ball that threw the country into chaos. DeSantis will present himself as the philosopher king who will restore order. It's a one-two punch: Trump–vicious jab to the jaw; DeSantis–crippling uppercut to the gut.
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