UPDATE (Jan. 21, 2024 3:10 p.m. E.T.): With just two days to go before the New Hampshire primary, Ron DeSantis has suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) January 21, 2024
– Winston Churchill pic.twitter.com/ECoR8YeiMm
Ron DeSantis was in trouble. After years of hype as the politician who would topple former President Donald Trump, the Florida governor came in a distant 2nd place in the Iowa caucuses. Yes, he somewhat surprisingly held off a late charge from Nikki Haley, but he still trailed Trump by nearly 30 percentage points among Republican voters. And the road ahead for him looks even more daunting.
For DeSantis, everything was riding on Iowa. While the state’s voters often opt for candidates who don’t win the eventual GOP nomination — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas beat Trump there in 2016, for example — the caucuses narrow the field and set the tone for the rest of the race. In this case, the takeaway is that Trump is indeed as dominant in the Republican field as poll after poll has suggested, and that he has no real rival. Iowa was DeSantis’ one major opportunity to disrupt the narrative that Trump’s nomination was inevitable, and he didn’t.
The takeaway is that Trump is indeed as dominant in the Republican field as poll after poll has suggested.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. DeSantis invested tremendous resources in the Hawkeye State, and even as his campaign dealt with financial troubles, he specifically prioritized investing in campaign staff and field operations there. He also hustled to secure local endorsements and succeeded in securing some big ones, including evangelical power broker Bob Vander Plaats and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. Super PACs backing his candidacy spent tremendous amounts of cash on ads and door-knocking operations, seeing that strategy as the prime opportunity to derail the Trump train. But in the weeks before the race, one of those PACs, Never Back Down, spiked its ad buy plans after sensing that DeSantis’ candidacy was already a lost cause. Monday’s results vindicated its concerns.
If DeSantis couldn’t pull off a win in Iowa — where he went all in and where voters are uniquely open to non-front-runner candidates — it’s hard to imagine where he can win. In all likelihood he will be thrashed in New Hampshire, where he’s been averaging around 6% support in recent polls and has been running far behind not just Trump but also Hayley. (He was even running behind former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who dropped out of the race on Wednesday.) South Carolina, where DeSantis is also sitting well below Trump and Haley in the polls, looks grim as well. There’s no bright spot on the map for DeSantis to look forward to.
DeSantis’ weak performance underscores his acute charisma problem. Iowa is famous for allowing politicians to show off their retail politics skills. White House hopefuls spend loads of time hobnobbing with voters, holding intimate town hall-style events and making appearances at community gatherings to maintain a high profile and organically build voter trust. DeSantis spent the requisite amount of time in Iowa, but the main narrative that emerged was that he’s exceptionally awkward. In a Washington Post story titled “Awkward Americans see themselves in Ron DeSantis,” the reporter describes DeSantis’ attempt to woo voters in a diner as him standing “ramrod straight, taking gulps of beer and checking the time on his phone and telling potential voters that normally he would already be asleep.” While then-South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was able to use his finesse as a speaker to rise from obscurity and win in the Democratic caucuses in Iowa in 2020, DeSantis went the opposite direction with his inability to connect interpersonally. There has been speculation that DeSantis’ theory of victory includes his hoovering up Trump voters if Trump’s criminal trials deal him a fatal blow. So far, there are no signs that anything short of a prison sentence is capable of putting a dent in Trump’s support, and it’s not only unclear if that will happen, but also if it would hurt him among his base if it did. (Trump could insist on staying in the race for the Republican nomination, as there’s no law preventing him from running for president from prison.) Moreover, with Haley roughly tied with DeSantis in national polls and looking stronger than him in the upcoming nominating contests, DeSantis should no longer be presumed to be the GOP’s alternative to Trump. If DeSantis had unique political values or a distinct policy vision, then one could argue that sticking in the race would be a way for him to continue to lobby for his own ideas to be incorporated into the eventual Republican Party platform. But given that DeSantis is a Trump knockoff who’s seen Republican voters consistently sour on him, one has to wonder what reason he’d have for staying in the race.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer for MS NOW. Sign up for his newsletter. 
