Yair Rosenberg: “On paper, DeSantis’s campaign is in dire straits: He’s trailing the front-runner, Trump, by a two-to-one margin in national polls. But there is no national primary, only individual state contests—and the first of these will take place in Iowa in early 2024. The outcome of that showdown has the potential to shape the entire primary to follow, and by pivoting hard to the right on social issues including abortion and gender, DeSantis has been methodically positioning himself to win it…”
“Of course, there’s a cost to running a campaign designed to appeal to your party’s most fervent partisans. By staking out unpopular positions to win the primary, a candidate puts himself at a disadvantage in the general election, where independent voters tend to punish perceived extremism.”
