Trump's 2024 rivals waiting for him to drop in the polls are kidding themselves: analyst

Republican rivals to former President Donald Trump are trying to assuage fears about their failure to break through in the polls by saying that it is still early, and there is plenty of time for Trump to sag in the polls and for them to catch up. “There’s a long way to go in this campaign,” said former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Fox News Sunday, adding, “At this time in 2015, Donald Trump was at 4 percent. So I don’t think anybody should be worried about the polling right now.” (In fact, Trump was at 9 percent.) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had a similar line, telling Fox that “most people aren’t paying attention" yet.

But this really isn't a good argument, wrote Philip Bump for The Washington Post on Monday.

"Are Christie and DeSantis right that things might shift in their direction?" wrote Bump. "Sure, in the abstract. Lots of things can happen. Trump could be abducted by Romulans. Who knows? But in a practical sense, there’s no reason to think that the state of play will shift in a way to make Christie viable — or even to make DeSantis successful."

A review of recent GOP primaries show that a nominee can emerge out of nowhere, noted Bump — Trump himself being an example of this. However, "while Trump is the driver of the party agenda and rhetoric, he has been effective at still presenting himself in opposition to the party’s traditional power centers" — and that means Christie or DeSantis can't really present himself as the outside challenger to the establishment, as Trump did to gain support.

Without the ability of those candidates to position themselves as outsiders, wrote Bump, "it’s hard to see how 2024 will look much like 2016. No matter how far away the election is."

DeSantis, for his part, has shrugged off the fact that Trump has a 30-point lead on him, mostly blaming the deficit on media "narratives."