Beating Trump in the Primary is The Easy Part 

On the issue of whether Trump is “done,” as I put it below, the primary itself really isn’t the question. There seems little doubt that another Republican could defeat Donald Trump for the nomination, though I’m skeptical of whether that person is Ron DeSantis. The more operative question is what you do with Trump after you beat him. Normally you have a primary battle and one candidate comes out on top. It may be a cakewalk or a brutal slog. But one candidate gets the most delegates and the others fall in behind that candidate.

It’s very difficult, though, to imagine Donald Trump losing a hard fought primary struggle and then just gracefully falling in line as a surrogate for the guy who beat him. In fact, it’s basically impossible to imagine that happening.

Is Trump Done?

I’ve treated it as a given that Trump is the nominee in 2024 if he wants to be. But today’s “Major Announcement” from Trump, which ended up being a new set of NFT playing cards with Trump in a bulging Superman suit, crystalizes my growing doubts about whether he still has the juice to go another round. We’ve also seen a couple polls this week which show a clear majority of self-described Republican primary voters prefer Ron DeSantis over Trump, albeit with DeSantis continuing Trump’s policies. But polls can change. Nor does a poll more than a year out from the first primary capture all the kinetic dimensions of an actual primary battle. What is less changeable are the growing signs that Trump is just a loser.