Who wins Trump v. DeSantis? Joe Biden

Joe Biden often says, “don’t compare me to God Almighty, compare me to the alternative.”

Surprisingly, midterm voters did just that. By small but crucial margins, voters consistently preferred Biden-supported Democrats over dodgy candidates handpicked by the alternative, Donald Trump. But in the wake of his landslide reelection as governor of Florida, hasn’t Ron DeSantis become the real GOP alternative now, as some Republicans now claim? The answer is no, not with Trump still in the game.

You would think that the biggest story of the midterms has to be the remarkable performance of Democratic candidates in the face of high inflation, Biden’s advanced age and low approval rating, and the traditional mid-term curse against the party in power. After all, Clinton and Obama, both more popular at this point in their terms, each lost well more than 50 seats in their first midterm.

Biden is the first Democratic President since John F. Kennedy in 1962 to not just retain Senate control but possibly expand his majority if Democrats win the Georgia runoff next month. And in the House, the GOP margin of control, assuming it continues, will be so slim that Kevin McCarthy will face constant mutinies from the restive and radical Trumpian members of his caucus.

Yet this isn’t even the biggest development out of last week’s election. Instead, the most important news is that the Republican Party is now permanently, bitterly divided between the loyal followers of Trump and more establishment figures lining up behind DeSantis. This massive shift in the tectonic plates of GOP politics will increasingly define the 2024 presidential election. And, in all likelihood, it will ensure that Biden not just cruises unopposed to the Democratic nomination, but will be reelected president two years from now.

The long-simmering feud between Trump and DeSantis suddenly turned into a white-hot and vicious all-out war late on election night. Trump took to social media, calling the Florida Gov. Ron “DeSanctimonious,” the demeaning nickname a sure sign Trump’s made up his mind to fight the governor to the bitter end. As he often does, Trump asserted that DeSantis owes his success to Trump: “Ron came to me in desperate shape in 2017…politically dead, losing in a landslide,” Trump said, then accused DeSantis of disloyalty for not ruling out a 2024 race.

It’s now clear that Trump, who appears ready to announce his own candidacy this Tuesday, will never support DeSantis for president, quite possibly even if DeSantis were to win the Republican nomination. This presents a nightmare scenario for Republicans in which Trump, still most popular with the GOP base, will purposely undermine the election of DeSantis. This risk helps explain why Rupert Murdoch’s publications — including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post — have in the last few days turned decisively against Trump, blaming him and him alone for the GOP election debacle.

Nevertheless, Trump is still the 800-pound gorilla of GOP politics. And The Donald makes Teflon look sticky. What other politician in U.S. history could incite an armed insurrection at the Capitol that killed five police officers in an attempt to overturn a legitimate election loss and still be the most popular figure in his party with approval ratings very similar to those of a successful sitting president of the United States?

As Trump himself said bragged during the 2016 campaign, he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Ave. and shoot somebody” and “wouldn’t lose voters.” This turned out to have been a dark harbinger of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

In all probability, the majority of Trump’s base will stand by him despite the attacks from establishment Republicans and Murdoch. And Trump is still the unequaled master at belittling and defining his political competitors in the Republican Party.

Trump will mostly be attacking DeSantis, not Biden, in the coming weeks and months. Yes, DeSantis won reelection in Florida, but the Sunshine State is increasingly red, and he faced a weak opponent in Charlie Crist. DeSantis, as Trump suggests, lacks the deft (if sinister) political touch of Donald Trump, and doesn’t have the faux populist, everyman instinct and cultural connection that makes Trump such a hero to his tens of millions of his rabid idolaters.

A bizarre story out of Florida surfaced last week that should serve as a metaphor for the Trump-DeSantis showdown. It seems a 18-foot python swallowed an alligator whole. Neither animal came out alive.

Even if DeSantis runs for the GOP nomination, Trump will probably remain more popular among Republican base voters, proving more than a match for DeSantis. So however the Republican Civil War plays out, it is Joe Biden and Democrats who will ultimately benefit.

Bledsoe is a strategic adviser with New Democracy and president of Bledsoe and Associates, a policy consultancy. He served as a staff member in the House, Senate Finance Committee, Interior Department and Clinton White House.