The argument is being made everywhere that after the 2022 midterms, Donald Trump is finished. In many cases, where Donald Trump intervened in a hotly contested primary, his candidates lost, especially where those candidates spent a great deal of political capital defending the notion that the 2020 elections were stolen from Donald Trump. Among the most notable in this band of losers: Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, and Tudor Dixon in Michigan.
Meanwhile, in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis absolutely triumphed, sweeping to reelection by nearly 20 points and winning outright counties such as Osceola that for decades had been written off as demographically unreachable for Republicans. In the days afterward, on his personal social network, Trump fired off a rambling defensive screed about DeSantis. Political social-media influencers who had once backed Trump are increasingly backing away from him. Among Republicans, it seems that everyone from Ann Coulter to Larry Hogan is against his running in 2024. And your correspondent here has wondered whether most right-of-center voters will look back and conclude that Ron DeSantis was their leader even before Trump exited the White House.
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