'Boxed in': Why Trump’s 2020 fixation is a 'fundamental problem' for Ron DeSantis

Although Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has yet to formally announce a 2024 presidential run, the far-right MAGA Republican certainly acted like he was running when he visited Iowa over the May 13/14 weekend and hosted two different GOP events. DeSantis' team made sure that the trip was well-publicized, obviously trying to show Republican voters that he would be a better presidential nominee than Donald Trump next year.

DeSantis' cheerleaders, including author/pundit Ann Coulter, have been arguing that in the general election, he would perform much better against incumbent President Joe Biden than frontrunner Trump would. But according to Politico's Sally Goldenberg, DeSantis' electability argument has a "fundamental problem": he "can't bring himself to say" that Trump lost the 2020 election.

"Donald Trump falsely insisting that the 2020 election was 'rigged' last week was nothing new for the Republican Party's presidential frontrunner," Goldenberg explains. "But by elevating the issue in his CNN townhall, he was also putting enormous pressure on his chief rival in the primary, Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor — who caught a break in Iowa over the weekend when severe weather kept Trump away from counter-programming his trip to the state — is seeking to persuade Republicans he's their only hope of defeating President Joe Biden, but implicit in DeSantis' argument that he is a more electable alternative to Trump is the idea that Trump actually lost."

Goldenberg emphasizes that DeSantis is evasive whenever the 2020 election comes up, and he has been performing a "highwire act" by trying to "keep Trump diehards happy enough to consider supporting him, while convincing Republicans who are desperate to move on from Trump that he will not perpetuate the ex-president's fixation on the past."

But according to Never Trump conservative GOP strategist Sarah Longwell — founder of the Republican Accountability Project and publisher of The Bulwark — DeSantis' evasiveness won't work in the long run.

Longwell told Politico, "He's going to be boxed in by the fact that he's basically making an electability pitch. And the trouble with the electability pitch is you've got to say, 'Donald Trump lost, and I can win.'"