2024

The 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be very depressing. If you're a Democrat voter and Biden is the nominee you're very likely voting for whomever his running mate is, which at this point is Kamala Harris, and the prospect of a Harris presidency is enough to drive all but the left-most ideologues to utter despair.

If you're a Republican voter you're currently faced with the likelihood that Donald Trump will be the nominee. If so, and if he were to win the election, he would very possibly be unable to get anyone of any quality to serve in his administration. After all, who in his or her right mind would want to risk falling afoul of this man because they did something he didn't want them to do or didn't do something he did want them to do?

If you're not sure what I mean ask Mike Pence or Jeff Sessions.

If Biden wins, it's doubtful that he'd serve for very long, and if Trump wins it's doubtful there'd be anyone else in his administration but him.

At this point polls are pretty much meaningless, but nevertheless Jim Geraghty shares some interesting numbers that reflect the state of play at this moment in time. Geraghty writes:

In mid June in Arizona, Public Opinion Strategies (POS) found Biden beating Trump by two percentage points, while Ron DeSantis beat Biden by eight percentage points.

The same firm surveying at the same time found Biden beating Trump by three percentage points in Pennsylvania, while DeSantis beat Biden by three points.

In Georgia, POS found Biden beat Trump by two percentage points, while DeSantis beat Biden by three.

In Michigan, the same firm found DeSantis beating Biden by two percentage points, while Trump trails Biden by a point.

And in Nevada, POS found DeSantis beating Biden by two points, and Trump losing to Biden by four points.

Perhaps most surprisingly, in my home state of Virginia, POS finds DeSantis and Biden tied, while Biden is ahead of Trump by seven percentage points.

In fact, once you start looking at other states and other pollsters, you see a consistent pattern of DeSantis winning just a few percentage points more support than Trump does in head-to-head matchups with Biden.

In North Carolina, Opinion Diagnostics finds DeSantis winning over Biden by five percentage points, while Trump beats Biden by three points.

Over in Wisconsin, Marquette University polling found Biden beating DeSantis by two percentage points, but beating Trump by nine points.

Again, these numbers could easily change in the coming weeks and months, but they do show one thing. The media narrative that DeSantis is floundering is, like many media narratives, a pile of hog poop.

It'd be ironic, and perhaps politically suicidal, if these numbers hold up but the Republicans nonetheless insist on nominating Donald Trump. We'll see.