As I said, they would like nothing better than to run against Trump EXCEPT indicting him, as well as his family. It’s like having two wonderful desserts from which to choose. Would you like the 7-layer chocolate cake, or the double rich chocolate mousse? Ah, if only there was a dessert buffet and you could have both!

No one on the other side is spooked by Trump anymore. He has cooked his own goose after the 2020 election, I’m afraid. He is showing poor judgment. His die-hard supporters will not desert him, but the people who came onboard will. He cannot survive politically without them.

I have never understood people who don’t think Democrats are tactically and strategically smart. They are.

It’s not that DeSantis is a shoe-in either, were he the 2024 nominee. Democrats know how to destroy people. But Trump destroyed himself.

That is my firm belief from what I observe. It would take a great deal to reverse that opinion. My sense is that Trump is panicked; I’ve described him as a tragic Shakespearean figure and I mean it. I’m not demeaning him. I think he was a great president with tragic flaws within himself, flaws that are probably connected with the things that also made him great.

Oh, and you write, “DeSantis is just a solid Republican governor in a state where the Republicans have controlled the state legislature and court system for years”. Trump said something of the sort – that DeSantis was an “average” governor. Obviously, a governor of any party can’t do much without a legislature to match, and DeSantis had that. But he barely won his 2018 election and yet now is a powerhouse in Florida. He did much more than his COVID response, too, including legislation about education as well as election rules, hurricane management, taking on Disney, and even increasing the GOP domination of the legislature in a year when that was not the trend in other states. He stood up to personal attacks in a commendable and tough manner, and did it with intelligence and flair.

More here.

DeSantis is just a solid Republican governor in a state where the Republicans have controlled the state legislature and court system for years. His talent — not a small one by any means — was seeing through the Covid panic in 2020 and 2021. But that will seem like very old news two years from now.

Trump getting elected president without having run for any other office is a much more impressive accomplishment and I bet it still has the political establishment spooked. They don’t know how he did it, they know that none of them could have done it, and they are still afraid of him. That is why they would prefer to have DeSantis be the Republican nominee in 2024. DeSantis they understand.

Au contraire; I think DeSantis is the Democrats’ worst nightmare at this point. They would dearly LOVE to run against Trump – although they may indict him first (Trump-detesting Andy McCarthy seems to think that will happen, and he certainly might be correct).

I live in Florida, and during the midterms, all the local media had stories about the Democrats withdrawing monetary support from their candidates for senator and governor. This was said to be due to their weakness in the polls. In that case it would also make sense for the Democrats to cut their budget for “delayed” vote counting in their Dade and Broward strongholds — in effect giving up the entire state to the Republicans. This would make DeSantis look good because it creates an impressive Republican sweep with no headlines about problems with counting the vote. It also creates difficulties for Trump because it builds up DeSantis among Republicans.

DeSantis had nothing to do with this, any more than Trump in 2016 had anything to do with the Democrats pushing him in the primaries because they thought he would be the easiest Republican for Hillary to beat. I have also read that Kari Lake in Arizona had Democrats contributing money to her primary campaign because she was thought to be the easiest to beat. For the Democrats to use their money to mess with Republican primaries and promote the candidates they prefer to run against is a matter of record — it’s how they roll. Is it really so unthinkable that they would also do this sort of thing in the Florida midterm elections to set up the 2024 presidential election the way they want?

Note also that if DeSantis runs for president, then Florida goes back to being a purple state. Just because many people in the right-wing media are bored with writing about Trump doesn’t make me eager to have someone like Gillum become Florida’s governor. (Gillum, who came uncomfortably close to beating Desantis in the last race for Florida’s governor, was — a few months after he lost — found passed out in a hotel room with a male prostitute and a bag of coke. This is the sort of person Democrats in Florida pick to run for governor).

Why would Democrats prefer to run against DeSantis rather than Trump? Well, he doesn’t project well when speaking (definitely not one of Trump’s problems). We pay little attention to this sort of thing when voting, but there are many low-information voters who take a quick look at the candidates’ TV presence and then choose. The Republicans in Florida have had an impressive majority in the state legislature for a while now, which means that DeSantis really has little experience dealing with a hostile legislature and a hostile government bureaucracy. Running DeSantis for president would not solve the problems of our messed up elections.

In a more hopeful note, Democrats can be wrong about how their machinations ultimately turn out — like with Trump in 2016.

Plus, Charlie Crist. Party swappers usually don’t make anybody happy, and that’s just the start.

No, the deep state, Democrat party, fake media may have fatally wounded him.

Since we’re now requiring loyalty pledges, I’ll certainly vote for DeSantis if he’s the nominee, will you vote for Trump if he’s the nominee? Reagan’s 11th amendment was trashed in 2016, when the GOPe joined forces with the left to try and defeat President Trump. A couple of troll-like posts on Truth Social and suddenly there’s an outbreak of the vapors. Let’s suppose President Trump hadn’t posted those “nasty” comments about DeSantis and Youngkin. In the same time period the media would have continued to make up stories about Trump. The only difference is the conservative media jumping on the story. I get it. Lots of Republicans don’t like Trump.

I understand this is how politics works. If Governor DeSantis decides to run, it will be a divisive primary. But it won’t be the first.

When President Trump announces his candidacy– whether on the 15th or after the Georgia election, it will likely prompt the Democrats to cast their fate with Biden. (If he does announce on the 15th, it will not affect the election in Georgia. The leftist media doesn’t need a reason to defame Trump and the deplorables.)

President Trump legitimately got 74 million votes in 2020. How many of Biden’s 81 million were legitimate? In spite of those numbers President Trump actually lost by 276,000 votes. How many of those were illegitimate from election workers ignoring state laws, excess ballots flooding some states, ineligible voters voting anyway, etc.

DeSantis supporters (or any other candidates that run) need to convince people sticking with Trump that he can’t get the same number of votes in those swing states.

Or Trump for Secretary of State. His was the first sane America centric foreign policy in decades.

I’m being irritable. I’m going to leave this comment up, but it’s not intended as an attack on you.

And changed that pattern.

If you are that borders on foolishness. Trump has fatally wounded himself politically. Only he and relatively few others don’t recognize that. It used to be said that only the GOP establishment, RINOS and Dems opposed Trump. Now, significant numbers of authentic Conservatives are turning away from him. The Democrats would love nothing better than to face him in 2024.

Although my opinion counts for nothing, it may be illustrative. I supported Trump through his Presidency and for some time after. I began to waiver as his bitterness seemed to just grow and becme nearly all consuming. All he talked about was how great he had been, and how the elections were stolen. Ok. We know. We have heard it all many times. How about working within the party to institute meaningful reforms at the grass root level? How about working to unite the party? He lost me completely with his actions during these mid-terms. He attacked GOP candidates, including DeSantis; and even publicly blamed Melania for some of his own poor choices. His recent actions are bordering on the bizarre; I assume that I would vote for Trump in ’24 in the unlikely event he survived the Primaries, but with no enthusiasm.

On the other hand, give one shred of evidence that DeSantis is not authentic.

Interesting that Florida is now considered a poster child on many levels for how a Conservative led state can function. Before DeSantis it was trending in the opposite direction.

If I misunderstood your intent, I apologize.

From a supposedly conservative outlet.

I bet most of their readers believe fraud had a big impact.

Perhaps it due to the fear of google shadow-banning the article.