On the menu today: There are two giant questions before the country. First, Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign becomes real today, in an interview with Elon Musk; how do Republicans feel about DeSantis as his presidential bid moves from potential to reality? Second, what is President Biden going to do in the debt-ceiling negotiations? White House officials are working the refs and whining that Republicans are enjoying too much good press, raising the unnerving possibility that some insane minds around President Biden think he could actually win the blame game in a post-default economic recession. What does Joe Biden fear more, a default and recession, or disappointing his left flank?
Welcome to the Race, Ron DeSantis.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis is expected to announce his campaign for president tonight at 6 P.M. in an interview with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces. The governor is scheduled to follow that announcement with an 8 p.m. interview with Trey Gowdy on Fox News.
When the history of DeSantis’s presidential campaign is written, his announcement will only be a small chapter. Maybe just a few paragraphs, really. The single most consequential moment in this primary is likely to be the first time Donald Trump and DeSantis are on stage together, and DeSantis challenges Trump and makes his argument about why he would be a better Republican nominee in 2024. It was either Chinese general Sun Tzu or professional wrestler Rick Flair who said, “If you want to be The Man, you’ve got to beat The Man.”
But when a candidate announces his campaign, it is his introduction to much of the country, and the one moment when the candidate is guaranteed to command the attention of the news cycle and shape the message. Think about how much you heard about Nikki Haley in the days after her announcement, and how much you hear about her now. If DeSantis wants to pitch himself as the guy who will make housing, groceries, gas, and daily life affordable again, he can do that. If DeSantis wants to emphasize, “I’m the guy who’s going to stop Disney’s CEO Bob Iger from brainwashing your kids,” he can do that. If DeSantis wants to emphasize, “I’m the guy who will make sure Xi Jinping doesn’t set the course of world events for the coming decades,” he can do that. After today, the news cycle will shift to other topics and unexpected events.
Is announcing your presidential bid in an interview with the CEO of Twitter “too online”? Well, by some measures, Twitter is now where the Republicans are. Pew Research found this month that Republicans now increasingly think Twitter is good for democracy:
The share of Republican and Republican-leaning Twitter users who say the platform is mostly bad for American democracy has dropped from 60 percent in 2021 to 21 percent today, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted March 13-19, 2023. At the same time, the share of Republican Twitter users who say the site is mostly good for democracy has risen from 17 percent to 43 percent.
Democrats’ views have moved in the opposite direction. The percentage of Democratic and Democratic-leaning Twitter users who say the platform is good for American democracy has decreased from 47 percent to 24 percent in the past two years, while the share who say it is bad for democracy has increased — though more modestly — from 28 percent to 35 percent.
And a January survey found that Democrats had fled the social-media platform, while a majority of Republicans trusted Elon Musk and think the platform is not biased against them:
Comparing our October 2022 survey conducted immediately before Elon Musk purchased Twitter to our December 2022-January 2023 survey, the percentage of Americans who reported using Twitter dropped from 32.4 percent to 29.5 percent. This decline was driven by Democrats, 38 percent of whom reported using Twitter in our survey before Musk took over the company, which dropped to 33 percent after.
-
53 percent of Republicans trust Elon Musk to do what is right either somewhat or a lot, compared to just 24 percent of Democrats.
-
Democrats were 15 percent more likely than Republicans to trust Twitter to do what is right before Musk purchased the site, but trust among Republicans and Democrats converged to equal levels following Musk’s takeover, with 34% of both parties trusting Twitter to do what is right.
-
Republicans perceived a significant decrease in bias against conservatives on Twitter and an increase in neutrality after Musk took over, while Democrats saw a significant increase in bias against liberals and a decrease in neutrality since Musk bought Twitter.
My colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty argues, “Elon Musk is a 70-30 or an 80-20 issue in America. He might be really unpopular among the handful of people who are just now signing up for Mastodon accounts, but for the rest of the country he’s still the guy who builds rockets and futuristic cars and has fun with Joe Rogan.” As luck would have it, less than a week ago, the Harvard-Harris poll asked 2,004 registered voters how they felt about Musk, and while the numbers aren’t as good as MBD contended, Musk was seen favorably by 47 percent and unfavorably by 33 percent. That was the highest positive percentage and the single best positive-to-negative ratio in the survey; the surveyed public figures who had lower unfavorable percentages, such as Haley, Tim Scott, and Vivek Ramaswamy, also had much lower favorable percentages.
Meanwhile, the previous big venue for reaching a big audience of Republicans, Fox News, is a shadow of its former self. (It is worth keeping in perspective that Fox News is seeing a major post-Tucker Carlson audience slide, but still often enjoys a bigger audience than its rivals.) The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi writes that Trump’s town hall on CNN attracted “an audience of just 3.3 million viewers, about a third less than the number of people watching an episode of Celebrity Wheel of Fortune on ABC the same night.”
(Perhaps some candidate should announce his presidential bid on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune. Longtime friend of National Review Pat Sajak would probably be amenable, and let’s face it, every day of the presidency is like trying to solve a puzzle. And buying vowels is a fitting warm-up to run the executive branch of a country whose finances amount to “IOU.”)
My colleague Dominic Pino observes, sharply, that cable news still matters “in the imaginations of people in and around Washington, D.C. That may be a reflection of gerontocracy; senators are prime age for cable news. It’s still seen as prestigious to get a cable-news show, or even make an appearance on one. Hardly anyone’s actually watching.”
My only minute quibble with Pino’s assessment would be that every now and then, an interaction or interview on cable news, or the network Sunday shows, or some other venue goes viral on social media, with people watching excerpts on Twitter and YouTube and other forms of social media. But broadly speaking, yes, cable-news-network sets are becoming a bit like Vegas — what happens there stays there.
Does Biden Think He Can Win a Post-Default Blame Game?
This Politico story, featuring a slew of White House staff complaining that the media aren’t being hard enough on the Republicans during the debt-ceiling negotiations, is an ominous sign:
Biden world believes the press corps is botching the coverage of the debt ceiling fight.
White House officials groan that reporters are not framing the debate as one in which Republicans are using the debt ceiling, and the possibility of economic catastrophe, to force policy concessions. They’re frustrated that the press corps isn’t calling out House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for treating the idea that he’d stop the country from plunging into a recession as some sort of compromise. They say reporters aren’t making it clear that raising the debt limit does not equal authorizing new spending.
We are eight days away from “X Day,” the day that the money runs out for paying U.S. debts, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, although outside observers such as Goldman Sachs calculate that the U.S. could pay its bills for another eight or nine days after that. The U.S. government should get an influx of cash on June 15, when quarterly tax payments arrive.
Either way, time is ticking down — and instead of trying to reach a deal, White House officials are working the refs and whining that Republicans are enjoying too much good press.
The position among Biden and most Democrats is that work requirements for Medicaid and Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program benefits are draconian, cruel, and fundamentally unjust. However, a recent survey found 63 percent of people strongly or somewhat strongly support requiring Medicaid or SNAP recipients to show proof of work to receive benefits, a number that includes 66 percent of independents and 49 percent of Democrats.
The position among Biden and most Democrats is that Republican calls for spending cuts are also draconian, cruel, and fundamentally unjust. But a new CNN poll finds that 60 percent of Americans say Congress should only raise the nation’s debt ceiling if it cuts spending at the same time, a number that includes 58 percent of independents and 45 percent of Democrats. The positions that Democratic officeholders denounce as “extreme” are in fact mainstream and supported by almost half of all self-identified Democrats.
Right now, Biden has a handful of options, none of which are appealing.
- Biden could agree to the GOP bill that passed the House and raises the debt ceiling, enacting work requirements, repealing most of the $80 billion windfall for the IRS and the illegal and unconstitutional “student-loan forgiveness” plan, taking back some of Democrats’ green-energy subsidies, and reforming the permitting process to make it easier to build new energy infrastructure. Obviously, this would represent a near-full surrender, and there’s almost no chance of its happening.
- Biden could make a serious counteroffer that would give the House GOP some policy wins and enrage progressives. One major drawback is that once Biden includes some GOP priorities in a proposal, it makes it much tougher for him to denounce those priorities as extreme and harmful to the country on the campaign trail in 2024.
- Pursue the 14th Amendment option, recognizing that the Supreme Court is extremely likely to find it unconstitutional. Among other problems, what does this mean for the debt issued without congressional authorization?
- Wait and hope that McCarthy flinches and surrenders at the last second. There’s almost no chance of this happening, either.
But the final scenario probably ought to terrify us: What if Joe Biden, or someone who is whispering in his ear, believes that the White House could win the blame game after a default on the debt?
We don’t know just how bad a default would be, but we know it would be bad. I can understand doubting the predictions of economic cataclysm, but at minimum, the financial markets would freak out, the stock markets would tank, and your 401(k) would suddenly look smaller. With the single clearest rule of the U.S. economy — the U.S. government always pays its debts on time — suddenly broken, banks and financial institutions would suddenly get way more cautious. Social Security checks would likely get delayed. Some portion of the more than 5,000 federal government contractors would not get paid as scheduled. That sudden interruption in income would then cause severe headaches for those contractors, who might need to institute layoffs. On top of that, federal workers might not get paid for a while, like during a government shutdown. We would likely experience a recession.
All of this would be really bad for any first-term president in his third year in office and seeking reelection, but this is extremely bad for an 80-year-old mumbling president who’s overseen the worst inflation in four decades, an unprecedented wave of migrants at the border, and a humiliating debacle of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, and who is increasingly projecting an image of aged, meandering, irritable haplessness. Would House Republicans take a severe political hit from a default and recession? Sure. But there’s no way an incumbent president can dodge responsibility for the state of the economy while running for reelection.
ADDENDUM: Hugh Hewitt would like you to know that a vengeful killer whale called Gladis is teaching gangs of orcas to attack yachts around Gibraltar, and has already struck three boats — sinking two of them.
It’s Jaws meets Occupy Wall Street.