It appears nothing will derail the mainstream media fantasy that the 2024 Republican presidential primary contest is going to be competitive — and that Donald Trump may even lose to one of his younger challengers.
"DeSantis super PAC strafes Trump in first TV ad," triumphed a headline at Axios over an article that promised "a vicious fight between" Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis and Trump.
"Trump or DeSantis? Democrats aren't sure who they'd rather see Biden face in 2024," reads a headline at NBC News, which misleadingly implies that Democrats have any say in a contest solely decided by Republican voters.
"Trump's flat fundraising and Haley's big donors," declared an NBC News headline, suggesting former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley's campaign could give Trump a run for his money.
"Tim Scott Goes Positive and Hopes His Party Will Come Along," read The New York Times' glowing profile of South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
The last one is an especially perfect example of how misleading this coverage is. Not only is it wrong to suggest Scott has a snowball's chance in the hell that is the GOP primary, but it's also flat-out untrue that there's anything "positive" about his campaign. Scott's speeches are the same bleak right-wing lies you'll hear from any Republican politician, accusing Democrats of wishing to "replace law and order with fear and chaos" and "getting communities hooked on the drug of victimhood." But the mainstream media is just that desperate to believe that Republicans are ready to leave behind Trump and his apocalyptic and hateful style of politics. Journalists who really should know better are trying to will a fresh and less depressing GOP into existence.
Well, it's not going to work. Not only are all these "new" Republicans molding themselves into the MAGA image of angry culture warriors, but they are all also going to fail miserably to unseat Trump. All this talk about new blood is interesting to the mainstream press and their mostly non-Republican audiences, but it fails to understand what motivates most Republican voters, especially those who vote in primaries. They don't want fresh faces, or anything resembling change. The whole point of being MAGA is bitterly clinging to an imaginary past, and rejecting any reminder that time is marching on past the stale reactionary politics of people, like Trump, who haven't updated their worldviews since the 80s.
The mainstream media is just that desperate to believe that Republicans are ready to leave behind Trump and his apocalyptic and hateful style of politics.
It's silly to imagine any of these younger candidates can give Trump a run for his money in the GOP primary.
Haley got some good press by bragging about raising $11 million in 6 weeks. Turns out the real number was closer to $8 million. Scott can't get much attention at all, except when he's bumbling an answer about abortion. And the more people see DeSantis, the less they like him, as his plummeting poll numbers and increasingly dry fundraising apparatus show. Realistically, the polls are where they have been for a couple of years: Trump is the frontrunner in the GOP primary race and no one else is close. That isn't going to change.
The press struggles to understand this, for a sympathetic reason: It continues to be hard to understand why Republican voters prefer Trump. For one thing, Trump is a criminal and his legal situation is likely to get worse, making him even more poisonous to those general election voters that Republicans supposedly want to win over. But also, Trump's clownish behavior has only grown worse since he left office in disgrace. He rambles incoherently on a good day, telling bizarre stories that he obviously made up, such as all the municipal workers supposedly weeping uncontrollably at his arraignment. Even when you can figure out what the hell he's talking about, he's invariably whining. He also just seems tired and cranky all the time, like he needs a nap more than he needs another campaign event.
Journalists who really should know better are trying to will a fresh and less depressing GOP into existence.
Perhaps, however, it's not that voters are overlooking how Trump is a miserable grump, it is exactly his appeal. The MAGA community is a bunch of people who are consumed with an obsessive anger that the world just keeps on changing without their permission. That's why all the focus is on banning books and harassing drag shows. It's a bunch of angry, mostly elderly people who cannot believe that time is allowed to keep marching on. So they want to punish the youth for the crime of being young.
Cranky, tired, whiny Trump is a perfect avatar for MAGA. It's not a movement that wants to turn a page or move into the future. They are people who want to join Trump in spending the rest of their days yelling at the kids to get off their lawn. Even DeSantis, who is willing to channel that vengeful old man energy, will invariably fall short. He has prematurely aged himself, but he's still in his 40s. There's always an outside chance he once enjoyed a hip-hop tune. Why take that risk? They can have Trump, who is authentically angry that architectural styles weren't frozen at the time of his birth in 1946.
Thankfully, Trump's grumpy old man act is a liability in a general election. It's also clear that most of his voters don't care that he's unpopular. On the contrary, that's also part of his appeal. They hate the rest of us, and inflicting Trump on us is seen as an act of revenge.
Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall got frustrated with the press over the weekend for continuing to bamboozle folks about the real nature of the GOP presidential nomination contest.
2/ clear that the bottom has fallen out of DeSantis’s campaign. Given how badly he’s doing there’s a good chance he won’t even run. Unless Trump dies there’s every reason to think he’ll be the gop nominee and there won’t even be much of a primary campaign at all in early 2024. pic.twitter.com/CajhxyJ33O
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 16, 2023
Perhaps this seems like an overreaction. You may wonder what the harm is, if the press overhypes the chance of a competitive GOP primary. You may even tell yourself it's no different than when sports journalists embellish the possibility of an underdog victory to drum up excitement about a game people might not otherwise watch.
Politics is not sports, in that the stakes are far higher, even when discussing a presidential primary. When the press hypes the idea of a non-Trump challenger pulling ahead, they are misleading the public about the nature of the GOP. They're concealing how rigid, reactionary, and hateful MAGA Americans are. Defeating this nasty and fascist movement depends on seeing them for who they are: Sour people who love Trump because he reflects their ugliness back to them. Republicans have always intended to keep Trump as the head of their party because he's how they will punish the rest of us for wanting to move on past their narrow-minded bigotry.
