Today's headline story. How Trump Benefits From an Indictment Effect by all the usual suspects (a.k.a. Jonathan Swan, Ruth Igielnik, Shane Goldmacher, Maggie Haberman) starts out OK, but a few paragraphs in hits a really bad patch, one of those infuriatingly flawed and self-serving arguments that will pick at you until you put it all down.
I tweeted the offending passage with a short thread and was planning on writing a post this evening...
Today's NYT political analysis suggests that DeSantis was on track to win the nomination until the indictments derailed his campaign. Even if we include the relatively minor hush money case (3/30/23), does this timeline make any sense? @joshtpm
— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) August 13, 2023
@charles_gaba
@RonFilipkowski pic.twitter.com/PPmXdYOflY
[The "flattering segments" link to the same Tampa Bay Times article we quoted in our post a year ago.]
— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) August 13, 2023
One final point.
— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) August 14, 2023
Most of the MSM, particularly the NYT, embraced DeSantis, despite his anti-vaxx, anti-democratic, and homophobic positions. They praised his political talents, declared him inevitable. The indictment narrative lets them off the hook.
... but the thread sparked a discussion that covered all the points I wanted to make, probably in a more interesting way. Here are some highlights.
and to emphasize the point, the indictments definitely sped up the process. but it mainly exposed the fact that Trump was close to unbeatable and the DeSantis hype was largely a mirage. &that doesn't even get into the fact DBR was an utter weirdo and people started to notice.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 13, 2023
basically yes. then they let Ron travel beyond florida plus the indictments and he just crashed and burned
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 13, 2023
[The process definitely started before November 2022, but otherwise yeah.]It amazes me that so many political reporters don't (don't want to?) understand the dynamics of not-______ candidates. Not-Mitt, not-Hillary, not-Trump. The way they look good on paper, surge in the polls, then go away.
— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) August 13, 2023
And he was the guy because he & FL GOP crushed Crist/Dems in Florida, but that wasn’t so much because FL voters loved him, it was mostly because Dems were massively dispirited.
— Charles Gaba isn't paying for this account. (@charles_gaba) August 13, 2023
also, what i only learned recently they outspent Dems like 10 to 1. To be clear, it's sort of the same thing. No one wanted to give because they knew Ds wld lose. But it did contribute a lot to the massive margin.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 13, 2023
The argument that DeSantis was the frontrunner before April is 1)not supported by polling and 2)mostly based on the transparently fallacious premise that only a superlative political talent could win statewide election as a Republican in Florida https://t.co/TFO01KuzIM
— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) August 13, 2023
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