On "The donor class fantasy campaign"
I wish I came up with “the donor class fantasy campaign” line, but I didn’t.
“Jules, y'know, honey... this isn't real. You know what it is? It's St. Elmo's Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them... there was no fire. There wasn't even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you're making up all of this. We're all going through this. It's our time at the edge.”
— St. Elmo’s Fire.
I wish I came up with “the donor class fantasy campaign” line, but I didn’t. Tim Miller of The Bulwark did. Miller, in Aspen for the Ideas Festival (no elite reality distortion field going on there), samples some of the flavors of the season soon to be discarded by the overclass. In fine, DeSantis has fallen out of flavor, but is retooling his campaign, probably to naught. Apparently the Florida Governor, who is not setting the campaign trail on fire despite raising a noteworthy $20 million in the second quarter, held a donor retreat in Park City, Utah over the weekend to touch base with his worried, creepy-ass big-money donors. By contrast Trump — a former President and the presumptive frontrunner — raised $35 million from an equally creepy, bedazzled bunch.
I mention these massive sums of money from the donor class only to highlight their ridiculousness. This money, in exchange for “favors” further on down the line (usually tax breaks, but also ambassadorships and cabinet positions), like Time, is running out. It is of a finite quantity. The DeSantis campaign burned through roughly $8 million of their $20 million stash of loot in the first six weeks of a campaign that is still double-digits behind the frontrunner, Trump. What, pray tell, is the ROI? One can almost imagine some fatcat taking DeSantis into “the library” for a cigar and a brandy and a robust talking-to about how “money does not grow on trees.”
The DeSantis 2.0 reset in Utah is, if anything, an acknowledgement that things are not going well despite the fundraising numbers. “The roughly 70 donors and fundraisers in attendance heard from campaign manager Generra Peck, pollster Ryan Tyson, political director Sam Cooper and deputy campaign manager Ethan Eilon, who provided a detailed look at the campaign’s early fundraising and messaging troubles and their plan for a turnaround,” Steve Contorno and Kit Maher note on CNN.com. Further, they add, “Republican donors and others invested in finding an alternative to Trump have privately – and sometimes publicly – raised concerns about DeSantis’ insular political operation, which is dominated by the governor, his wife and a handful of devoted advisers who lack presidential race experience.” But, hey, $25 million, y’all!
As we enter zenith of summer, the donor class fantasy campaign is brimming with shimmering stupidosity. And it is getting rather late in the game, to be frank, to be hurling this much money into the ethers, like some sort of private economic stimulus plan for the radio market in Iowa and New Hampshire. So there have been campaign cuts; and there will be more in “DeSantisWorld.” Still, the media covers DeSantis like he has a shot (he does; a longshot) at overtaking Trump. But where is the evidence? He does not have charisma. His campaign strategy appears to be not to attack Trump hard, and to come at the guy from the right flank. Is there even any political real estate to the right of Donald Trump? Or are we just talking about random acts of unfathomable cruelty at this point? Does DeSantis kick the cane out from under an old lady in Tallahassee next week? Will it be breathlessly reported in Politico?
And the others are even doing worse. Pence, who is going (lets be honest) nowhere, raised $1.2 million in the second fundraising quarter. To what end? The former Vice President, it should be noted, does not even yet qualify for a place on the podium at the first debate in Milwaukee. That should be the headline; the embarrassment of a former Vice President struggling to get onto a debate stage that Vivek Ramaswamy has already scaled. While former UN ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who probably knows every voter in the state Iowa by name by now, raised $7.3 million. And South Carolina Senator Tim Scott in raising $6.1 million, also qualified for the first debate. The aforementioned Vivek Ramaswamy — the most flavorful flavor of the month — and kamikaze pilot Chris Christie have also both officially qualified to the first debate, about a month away, in Milwaukee.
Then there are the “other” others — the ones that are spoken of in membrane-red, Bergmanesque cries and whispers, having not (yet) qualified for the debate. They are also known as the “self funders,” or the multi-millionaires that really and truly believe in themselves. Tech multi-millionaire and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum raised $11.7 — over $10 million of which (cough, cough) was a personal loan. Vivek Ramaswamy, like Burgum, donated about $5 million to his campaign. Finally, Virginia Governor Youngken — not a self-funder, btw — is mulling a run, though it is very, very late in the game for him to be searching for a room at the donor class trough.
Unless something dramatically changes on the ground, this is Trump’s nomination to lose. DeSantis, of course, has a shot — but even that is looking increasingly unlikely. And it is Trump’s race to lose largely because no one has taken the race to him. None of them, aside from Christie, have the guts to take the car keys away from grandpa. So terrified of the wrath of the Trump voter are they that they would rather attack each other and hope for a deus ex machina to take the former President off the playing field. It is, in short, a “political donor class fantasy campaign,” devoid of reality, reported on dutifully by the political commentariat. According to Miller:
But I would expect professional political commentators, and donors shelling out millions in campaign cash, and the political strategists receiving that cash, to live in the real world.
Alas this is not the case. Instead we have a heavily capitalized right-wing ecosystem that exists to prop up an imaginary Republican presidential primary so that the participants can feel better about their party identification. This way they can do business with Republican politicians or chew the fat at the club without feeling icky at having to admit that their Grand Old Party has become something dark.
In this imaginary primary, some people are wondering if Tim Scott might surge to the top. Highly unlikely! Others are looking longingly at Glenn Youngkin and chattering among themselves about whether or not he might perform better than DeSantis.
In this fake primary there are several candidates using creative strategies to figure out how to make it onto a debate stage. Yet should they succeed, they do not plan to use that stage to directly challenge the person beating them by 50 points in the polls. (If he even bothers to show up.)
And why would Trump even bother to show up? He has nothing to gain and everything to lose to Chris Christie in that scenario. Trump showing up for the Milwaukee debate would be the equivalent of an in fine campaign donation of $50 million tot he Christie campaign, as opposed to skipping it altogether and allowing Christie to dissolve.
And while, yes, Trump’s destiny is his character, it would be pure madness to subject himself to the white hot anger of the former Governor of New Jersey. “The feud is ancient and sanguinary, with each side taking a piece out of the other as they pass each other, every four years, during the Presidential race,” I wrote in early June. “I mean, Trump gave Chris Christie COVID, probably through debate prep, after concealing the fact that he even had the virus.” Such is their mutual animosity. One of Trump’s greatest political “strengths” is his shamelessness. He has no bottom (neither do his acolytes). Trump has no problem insulting the physical appearance of an opponent’s spouse. As a result it is almost impossible to beat him on a crowded debate stage. Christie, however, would shred him like lettuce.
But that’s not going to happen. Either Trump or DeSantis wins the Republican nomination, almost definitely Trump. And the evaporating money from the donor class will not have mattered a whit at the end of the primary season. The Republican Party is under the thrall of a corrupt and seedy New York real estate marketer. And all the pretentions of the donor class cannot change that simple, rancid fact. But it makes for a good story for journalists in the thick of an unreasonably long and hot summer.
“At The New York Times, Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman have a report with frank admissions from a host of Trump associates that Trump is planning a political purge of the entire federal government, in order to bend it to his will. Given Trump’s history, it’s clear that should he become president again, he will try to set up a dictatorship. When Trump first came to power, he had little idea of how the federal government worked or even what he wanted to do with it, much less how to bend it to his will.” (Ryan Cooper/TAP)
Israel’s biggest security threat is Benjamin Netanyahu (Max Boot/WashPo)
“We all have our personal relationships to The Bomb. I came of age during the last years of the Cold War.” (Nina Burleigh/American Political Freakshow)
Israeli Knesset passes judicial overhaul bill despite mass protests, U.S. pressure (Barak Ravid)
“When contemporaries describe (Larry) Gagosian, they tend to summon carnivore analogies: a tiger, a shark, a snake. His own publicist once described him as ‘a real killer.’” (TNY)
The “Barbenheimer” media bonanza (Jon Allsop)
“Spain’s opposition conservative party secured the most number of seats in national elections but looked unlikely to secure a coalition rightwing majority after a vote that had raised fears of the far right entering government for the first time since the country returned to democracy after General Franco’s death five decades ago.” (The Guardian)