After a disappointing finish in Iowa, DeSantis is all but pulling out of New Hampshire—and prompting his biggest rivals to move to a new phase of the 2024 primary.
Welcome to Trail Mix, your 2024 election sanity guide. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at [email protected].
This week, we look at Ron DeSantis’ grim post-Iowa outlook. Plus, previews of New Hampshire’s bizarre Democratic non-primary and the state’s real GOP primary.
THE ART OF BACKING DOWN
HAMPTON, New Hampshire—Just days before the New Hampshire primary, Ron DeSantis is barely going through the motions.
Thus far, his week of campaigning in the state has amounted to delivering a scarcely altered stump speech at a biker bar, a radio hit where he reflected on his campaign’s failed media strategy, and promptly flying back to Florida.
If this is the candidate who had “punched his ticket” out of Iowa, as DeSantis claimed Monday night, he certainly isn’t acting like it.
Worse still for DeSantis, his competitors aren’t acting like it either.
At a critical phase of the Republican presidential contest, DeSantis appears to be so irrelevant in the minds of Donald Trump and Nikki Haley that both candidates signaled this week they’re now running as if the Florida governor isn’t even in the race at all.
Factor in staff layoffs at his allied super PAC and the situation appears so grim for DeSantis that both Haley and Trump’s campaigns have serious doubts the Florida governor will even continue the charade before votes are cast in New Hampshire on Tuesday—let alone after.
This article was originally published on The Daily Beast and partially republished here, with permission.
