Will Ron DeSantis be another Jeb Bush and Scott Walker? Or will he be another John McCain?
Jeb Bush and Scott Walker both entered the 2016 Republican presidential primary as candidates with much hoopla, then fizzled under the national spotlight, failing to excite actual voters.
John McCain entered as a frontrunner for the 2008 Republican presidential primary and plummeted to fourth place. Sort of how Ron DeSantis was once on par with Donald Trump in polls. But he has plummeted to 30 points behind the 45th president.
Ron DeSantis Slips
More recently, the Florida governor fired more than a dozen campaign staffers, signaling that his campaign is in trouble despite good fundraising numbers. The problem with those numbers is that he’s in horrible shape with small donors – often the best indicator of how healthy a campaign is doing.
So, this could be the beginning of the end of what could be a GOP coronation of Trump.
Or, maybe not.
In the summer of 2007, McCain began to lag in polls – with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani jumping into the lead. Eventually, former governors, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee entered the top three spots among GOP candidates.
This placed McCain in a miserably embarrassing spot of fourth place for a former frontrunner. After major firings, speculation ensued that McCain was about to drop out.
But he soldiered on, won New Hampshire, South Carolina, and dominated Super Tuesday. Along the way, Huckabee and Romney won a handful of states, but McCain easily captured the nomination after voting started.
McCain, of course, never became president. But we are talking about nominations in this case. And, pre-2016, Republicans were known for choosing an heir apparent. So, it’s tough to find a parallel GOP example of a comeback. But you don’t have to look back that far to find examples of extraordinary comebacks for Democrats.
Joe Biden was floundering in polls during the 2020 election. He failed to win, place, or even show in Iowa and New Hampshire, which suggested he was done.
Then, he had a near-miraculous comeback. The fact that candidates dropped out spontaneously just before Super Tuesday and endorsed Biden helped. It was almost as if a former president – or maybe two – worked the phones to warn about the danger of nominating Bernie Sanders or something. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that the man DeSantis wants to replace came back from a political near-death experience.
The same could almost be said of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who lagged far behind in their party’s primary polling.
Bill Clinton appeared defeated by his messy personal life, and unable to beat Sen. Paul Tsongas and other more experienced Democrats in the 1992 field. But voters opted to believe maybe Bill had sowed his wild oats and would be a responsible president. How did that work out?
Obama seemed like such an incredible longshot to defeat Hillary Clinton and the dynasty. But, in the end, a lot of Democrats who sympathized with Bill Clinton because of what they saw as unfair treatment from Republicans and a special prosecutor, ultimately decided, “Do we really want to go through all this again?”
What could DeSantis learn from those campaigns?
For one, bringing in a new campaign team can really help – presuming he dumped the people who were wrong for his campaign and is hiring the right people, always a gamble. That was particularly the case with McCain’s big comeback for the GOP nomination.
With the Biden comparison, it could simply come down to leaders of the GOP demanding a reality check in the crowded primary field. If by that point the multiple-indicted Trump seems unelectable, the un-nominatable field might coalesce around DeSantis much the same way nearly the entire Democrat field endorsed Biden.
The Bill Clinton example demonstrates that rocky roads are survivable and that primary polling doesn’t mean that much until the actual voting begins.
And the Obama example proves that a new face can defeat a seemingly inevitable nominee if enough party voters are asking themselves, “Do we really want to go through all this again?”
Barbara Joanna Lucas is a writer and researcher in Northern Virginia. She has been a healthcare professional, political blogger, is a proud dog mom, and news junkie. Follow her on Twitter @BasiaJL.
From 19FortyFive
Could Joe Biden Get Impeached?
Something Is Wrong With Kamala Harris
‘Breathing Fire’: Donald Trump Goes Crazy On Fox News Interview
