Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...
First, over at FHQ Plus...
- Are Iowa Democrats creating a calendar headache for the national party? A closer look at the delegate selection plan from Democrats in the Hawkeye state being found noncompliant. Plus a glance at the decisions Idaho Republicans made over the weekend. All the details at FHQ Plus.
If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.
In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
...
There are still six plus months until the likely New Hampshire primary, so FHQ will not make a mountain out of this molehill. But it is interesting that Team DeSantis has pulled back a bit in New Hampshire in recent weeks. It is not a withdrawal. This is no skipping story. But at the same time, it is not necessarily a strategic blunder for DeSantis to potentially deemphasize the Granite state in his pursuit of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
The early calendar is not about delegates, but New Hampshire offers the fewest delegates of the four early states and allocates them proportionally with a 10 percent qualifying threshold. That is a low bar for a handful of candidates to possibly clear and divvy up a few more than 20 delegates. DeSantis will likely need a win early, but it could be that libertarian-leaning New Hampshire is not the best fit for the culture warrior role DeSantis appears to be filling. It would not necessarily be a bad move not to go all in in such a state. There may be wins and the delegates to be had elsewhere.
No, New Hampshire will not be a state to skip. If the battle turns into one over delegates in the long run, then it may be a state where someone like DeSantis takes what he can get and moves on to better opportunities in other states. That is not a skip, folks. DeSantis and company will be in the Granite state. The coming weeks and months will tell us whether he will be all in there or not.
...
Amy Walter had a good one late last week at Cook Political Report about 2024 not being 2016 on the Republican side. FHQ weighed in on the subject when DeSantis jumped into the race. But Walter adds some solid detail on Trump's positioning now versus then.
...
Yes, super PACs are raising and spending a lot of money in the 2024 presidential race. Sure, they are, in some cases, pushing the legal limits on what they can do. But the super PAC era is very much an evolutionary one. And it remains an open question whether those entities can be as efficient and effective as traditional campaigns in some of those duties. That stands out as the primary hypothesis that will be tested this cycle on the presidential level where super PACs are concerned. Can they be as effective? Will they be as effective?
...
From around the invisible primary...
- In the travel primary, it is one of those weeks in New Hampshire. DeSantis, Haley, Hurd, Ramaswamy and Trump will all descend on the Granite state in the coming week.
- On the endorsement primary side of things, Trump made a splash heading into the weekend. He secured the backing of North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson and was endorsed by five of the eight Republicans in the Pennsylvania delegation to the US House.
- The story was not the same in Michigan ahead of the former president's trip there this last weekend. In fact, it has become noticeable how paltry Trump's endorsement total is in the Great Lakes state (just three in the past week) thus far. There is some chatter about the Michigan Republican rules helping Trump in 2024 -- and that may or may not be the case -- but the institutional backing is not there yet and that may make a difference in the insider game that caucuses can be. DeSantis unveiled a list of 19 state legislative endorsements in Michigan back in late April. That number is up to 25 now.
...
On this date...
...in 2019, Democratic presidential candidates gathered for the first of two consecutive nights of debates in Miami, the initial primary debates of the 2020 cycle.
--
Recent posts:
No comments:
Post a Comment