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It seems conceivable that letting him back on after the midterms might work to Republicans' ultimate advantage. It feels like the electorate has turned against insane clown shows, so Trump putting on his insane clown show might actually move the primary toward DeSantis, and render hollow further attempts by the Democrats to pin Trump to the modern GOP.
But if I had my druthers, he'd stay off -- or better yet, die peacefully in his sleep from natural causes.
why is Desantis winning a primary to the Republicans' "ultimate advantage"?
it would be the destruction of the GOP
Because DeSantis is a better politician: more capable of winning, and more capable through competence and effectiveness in office at growing his political strength and the strength of his party. He has demonstrated this during his time in Florida. Trump has demonstrated the opposite.
Desantis is not funny or cool. The 2016 primary debates were hilarious and will never be topped. Trump is way more entertaining. Who wants some boring unfunny guy
The electorate this midterm cycle. All of Trump's handpicked made-for-TV clown-car candidates lost to their boring professional opponents, while the GOP's own boring professional politicians did much better.
what was the success rate on a trump endorsements?
did JD Vance lose? that's weird, my bet paid out big on that one, but maybe they mistakenly transferred the money
TBH Trump endorsements were overwhelmingly for uncompetitive races. He was probably the reason the GOP decided to run carpetbaggers, one of whom was a rino and the other of whom had obvious brain damage, in two must-win races, and deserves blame for that.
Absent Trump the GOP almost certainly would've run McCormick in Pennsylvania and probably would have run Jody Hice in Georgia, and probably would have 51 senate seats right now.
that's an interesting take, what do you base that on?
5 points is a big loss to overcome in the totally legitimate and well-run elections of Pennsylvania. Why do you think McCormick would have overcome that? Other GOP candidates who weren't run by Trump didn't.
edit: It can't be that McCormick was more moderate than Oz. It has to entirely rest on Oz being a carpetbagger. Frankly, I highly doubt an electorate who is willing to send an obviously brain damaged person who struggles to form basic sentences by 5 points would have magically swung for a neocon establishment Bushite like McCormick. Oz did very well with the demo McCormick does well with (college educated whites). Oz did poorly with the working class. Do you think McCormick appeals to the working class? The primary results do not support that.
Because of that, I think if anything McCormick would have done even worse. But to be honest, I don't think candidate quality is the reason why the GOP so underperformed historic trends in specific parts of the country with specific election laws who run elections in similar ways. From what I can tell, the difference between nat'l vote and % of representatives is the worst in a midterm very long time (I stopped looking past a few decades).
whose endorsements did better?
I think that a fantastically wealthy and out of touch Muslim carpetbagging celebrity who’s served in a foreign military and was a democrat until recently might shave five points off of what you could reasonably expect, yes, and conspiracy fest radical ideas with no plans guys like mastriano might shave even more. Yes, fetterman was brain damaged and pretty weird to begin with. But he was, without a doubt, Pennsylvanian, in a way that Oz was, very definitely, not. He was ultra-progressive in all the ways Oz did a very poor job of assuring the electorate he wasn’t, and gave every sign of probably moderating in office(does anyone expect this guy to join the squad? No. He’ll be a more Neanderthal like establishment democrat and I think everyone knew that). He wasn’t going to campaign on Christian values but he was also not a Muslim. He was weird and had never worked but he wasn’t a celebrity with a history of pushing blue tribe quackery running from his mansion in another state.
Likewise mastriano did impressively bad because he wanted to get rid of public schools with no plan to replace them. Republicans tread carefully about moving away from a public schools model and have much clearer plans for how to put a replacement in position before doing so in much redder states than Pennsylvania.
I’m not even discounting voter fraud(I think it requires more evidence in the specific case of Pennsylvania 2022 to boost it over the alternative hypothesis of ‘GOP ran terrible candidates’ because the alternative hypothesis is true. They did run terrible candidates. Youngkin, Desantis, and Abbott have specific ways they bring right wing ideas into the public consciousness to subsequently win elections and these guys didn’t do that. They were clowns), but you know, let’s try to run better candidates that can actually win elections too.
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