Okay, all kidding aside. A couple weeks ago, I already said that this joke of a Republican primary was over, and Trump was gonna win the whole thing. But now I'm ready to go further: Trump will win every single primary contest against Ron DeSantis. Yes, you heard me. Every. Single. One.
This election season will mark the 52nd anniversary of the first real "presidential primary," where partisan voters of all 50 states have, for better and mostly for worse, gotten to choose their party's nominee. In that time, we have seen 17 party primaries in which no candidate of that party was the incumbent President. In only one of those did a candidate who was not the incumbent President win every single primary contest. That was Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 Democratic primary.
A quick look back at the Democratic Party's 2000 primary contest captures a lot of similarities between that primary and today's Republican contest. At that time, the Democratic party had been enjoying the success of President Clinton's two decisive victories in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. But on many of the important issues, both economic and cultural, Democrats had been unexpectedly placed on the back foot. Americans were unwilling to spend government money on healthcare and social programs, and were widely opposed to gay marriage. Republicans had unexpectedly taken back Congress for the first time in 40 years, despite most political analysts like conservative George Will stating just 10 years before, after the 1990 midterms, that Democrats would hold the House for the next decade. Liberals were forced to compromise many of their core principles just to survive an American public dead-set on small government and low taxes.
In 2000, despite the strength of the economy and Bill Clinton's popularity, Democrats felt completely leaderless, except for the right-hand man in the West Wing, Al Gore. Practically since the day Bill Clinton was sworn in to his second term, Gore was the man to beat in the primary. By the spring of 1999, analogically identical to where we are right now, a few mainstream Democrats like Dick Gephardt and John Kerry had tested the waters for a possible challenge to Gore, and had come to the conclusion that such a task would be impossible. Clinton's popularity and Gore's unbreakable political bond with the incumbent President could not be broken.
But some liberals in the Democratic Party had grown upset at the Clinton administration's compromises with Republicans in Congress, on measures such as the draconian mid-90s welfare reform, and laws that weakened the regulatory power of the executive branch on large corporations, especially those operating on the nascent worldwide web. While many Democratic voters may have been receptive to these arguments, most were not likely willing to risk nominating an über-liberal candidate who could hand the Presidency to the Republican frontrunner, George Bush, and grant him a larger majority in the Congress to cut taxes, blow up the deficit, and cut retirement programs. Despite the long odds, recently retired Senator and former NBA player Bill Bradley of New Jersey took up the challenge against the incumbent Vice President.
While the Democrats' situation in 2000 has many obvious differences from the GOP's 2024 primary contest, the Republicans are suffering from a similar void in leadership other than Donald Trump. Despite the fact that Donald Trump has been plagued by scandal, just as Clinton was in the late 90s (although about 1/1,000th as bad), there is no serious voice who can rise up and challenge him. And as a result, the only viable Republican candidate polling in double digits is Ron DeSantis, who appears to be headed to the same fate as Bill Bradley.
In 2000, most news organizations shied away from investing in polls for the Democratic primary, because Al Gore was perceived as being so far ahead in the race as the incumbent Vice President to a popular President Clinton. But a few opinion polls were taken over the course of 1999. Let's take a look at them:
- March 1999 - Gore: 58%. Bradley: 21%. Jesse Jackson: 15%.
- April 1999 - Gore: 54%. Bradley: 34%.
- April/May 1999 - Gore: 66%. Bradley: 23%.
- May 1999 - Gore: 59%. Bradley: 30%.
- June 1999 - Gore: 63%. Bradley: 28%.
- June 1999 - Gore: 64%. Bradley: 28%.
- August 1999 - Gore: 58%. Bradley: 31%.
- September 1999 - Gore: 63%. Bradley: 30%.
- October 1999 - Gore: 51%. Bradley: 39%
- October 1999 - Gore: 57%. Bradley: 32%.
- November 1999 - Gore: 58%. Bradley: 33%.
Notice something a little too familiar about these polls? Yeah, so did I. Although I don't quite trust the RealClearPolitics polling aggregator in general election polls, they are fairly reliable in primaries. Here is their average for the 2024 Republican primary:
Given that the 2000 Democratic primary only had two candidates, versus the GOP's half-dozen or so bottom-of-the-toilet-bowl candidates like Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson taking up single digits; if you give Trump and DeSantis the rest of those votes, their numbers match the Gore/Bradley spread almost EXACTLY.
Republican establishment donors and pundits in elite bubbles like the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board will continue to spout that "there's still so much time for Trump to implode and DeSantis to put himself out there." But the numbers have already made Trump's inevitable victory in the primary obvious to those of us in the land of reality.
So let's talk about how the 2000 Democratic party primary ended: Something that people often forget is that Gore and Bradley actually raised a nearly-identical amount of money in the lead-up to the primaries, just like how Ron DeSantis has been able to keep up with Trump with the help of rich mega-donors. But Bill Bradley knew that he was behind Gore by at least 20 points in the polls, and didn't have a chance at beating the incumbent Vice President if his campaign went national, even with lots of money in the bank. His best chance at breaking a hole in Gore's aura of electoral immortality would be to shock him in an early state and ride a wave of momentum and fresh fundraising. The Bradley campaign decided that the best place to launch this plan would be New Hampshire, one of the least populated states, meaning that Bradley would not have to spend down his war chest, but hop from town to town and engage with voters on the ground. In addition, New Hampshire's open primary that allows for Independent voters to participate gave Bradley a huge advantage with voters ready for a change away from the perceived "political establishment".
Gore won the Iowa Caucus easily with 62% of the vote, but many in the press saw Bradley's 38% a strong showing in a state that didn't allow Independents to participate. Just a week later, Bradley would have his best performance of the 2000 primary, but it wasn't enough. Gore won New Hampshire by a margin of 50% to 45%. Despite Bradley's impressive near-upset against an incumbent Vice President, it broke the Bradley campaign's back. Gore swept through every state on Super Tuesday, and it was over.
I suspect the same thing will happen in the Republican primary. The press would obviously prefer a primary riddled with conflict and suspense, with DeSantis and Trump fighting at point-blank for delegates. When you turn on CNN, they're not going to tell you that the result is inevitable. They want you to stay glued to the television; they want you to think the Republican debates and the drama will actually change a single thing in this primary. But here's what will actually happen:
The first state in the GOP primary will be Iowa, which is a state Trump actually lost in 2016 to Senator Ted Cruz, because of the state's high percentage of evangelical voters. DeSantis, despite his skittishness on the issue of abortion, will probably be very popular among a large section of Iowa social conservatives. We might find his war on "woke" silly and stupid, but these are Iowans, the famous over-religious citizens of The Music Man, scared out of their minds about the real world coming for their kids. "Right here in River City. Trouble with a capital "T" And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!" DeSantis might manage to hold Trump to a 10 point victory, but the story coming out of Iowa will be that Trump won a state that he couldn't even win in the 2016 primary. Just a week later, Trump will walk into much friendlier New Hampshire, a primary that he won by 19 points in 2016. It's a state that allows anti-establishment Independent voters to participate, making it even harder for DeSantis to climb over Trump's floor of support. Trump will probably walk out of New Hampshire with a 25-point victory.
Suddenly, the GOP primary will have an aurora of inevitability - the former President who faced a challenge, and quickly overcame it. It's like a college football game between Alabama and a team like Texas A&M with a losing record. It's always theoretically possible that the underdog could win the game, but when Alabama is up 28-0 against Texas A&M at the end of the first quarter, everybody knows the game is over. Even if the single-digit candidates like Haley and Hutchinson drop out after they get embarrassed in New Hampshire, Trump will still sweep the states of Nevada, Michigan, and South Carolina, all states he won in 2016, by 30 points or more. By the time Super Tuesday rolls around, DeSantis will be out of money, out of momentum, and out of time. Trump will sweep the Super Tuesday contests, even his weakest states like Utah, Vermont, and Minnesota, and it will all be over.
I suspect that many of the Republican elites who have spent the last 6 months plotting to take down Trump with complete futility will come to the same conclusion I have. But it may take them a little longer. For a lot of these rich donors, they will hold on to the false hope that someway, somehow, Trump will self-destruct. "There's no way that Republicans would nominate this LOSER!" they will say. But at some point, maybe this fall, or possibly around the New Year, these anti-Trump, pro-DeSantis conservatives will realize that nothing is going to save them. For anybody who has a dog, you know how excited they get about going on a walk. Even when you go to work and aren't taking them along with you, they still think they'll get to tag along and get to chase squirrels and smell the outside world. And right as you are about to close the door to leave, they suddenly realize that it's not going to happen. They aren't going on a walk. They are going to be left behind.
These Republican donors will, in the next year, have a moment when they realize the door has been shut on them, and they are being left behind. And I am going to enjoy it. Very, very much.
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