Over at Politico, Jonathan Martin has a piece pairing Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s launch with that of Senator Tim Scott’s, which postulates, “if Trump does emerge as the GOP standard bearer next year we will look back on this week to grasp why, just like in 2016, he was able to take advantage of a divided opposition.” The gist is that DeSantis failed to clear the field, and there are now a growing number of alternatives to Donald Trump who will be splitting up the votes and resources of those Republicans looking for an alternative. A scenario in which the field consolidates early around one non-Trump candidate is looking like more fantasy than reality.
I don’t take a serious beef with Martin’s piece, as far as it goes. It’s undeniable that one can look back at 2016, and recall how Trump benefited from all the other candidates spending months attacking each other and dividing up anti-Trump voters. And we can look at a similar dynamic taking shape in the 2024 cycle. But this analysis is also incomplete. The reason why Trump benefitted from a crowded field in 2016, and the reason why it is assumed that it will play to his advantage in this cycle, is that he has built a loyal following who won’t abandon him no matter what. We can debate what his absolute floor is (likely somewhere between 25 percent to 35 percent) but the point is, all of this analysis takes as a given the fact that he has a certain base that is rock solid. But Trump wasn’t handed those loyal supporters when he declared his candidacy in 2015 — he won them over. He was sui generis and, for better or worse, offered voters something that the other candidates did not.
For DeSantis to win, he is going to have to build his own loyal base of supporters who could not imagine voting for anybody else. While there have certainly been races in which the nominee lacks a passionate following and wins by default (2020 Democratic race and 2012 Republican race come immediately to mind), there was no circumstance under which that was going to be the case with Trump running. A scenario in which the field had been cleared, and the Republican primary were a year-long battle between Trump and DeSantis, with DeSantis needing to eclipse 50 percent to win, would not necessarily be an easier path to beating Trump than the current crowding field. The bottom line is that beating Trump will require DeSantis — or somebody else — to build their own following that is stronger than Trump’s in a critical mass of states. That was going to be true whether the field was two candidates, or 20.