Donald Trump's 2024 opponents are making the mistake of thinking there's plenty of time to destroy him, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump warned Monday.
By adopting a 'we're a long way from voting' attitude at this stage of the race means they could find out they've left it to long to launch an effective campaign against him, he said.
“There’s a long way to go in this campaign,” Chris Christie said on Fox News Sunday. “… 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.”
Bump also cited recent comments from Trump's closest opponent Ron DeSantis, who said in an interview that his team “really haven’t started” making his case to primary voters. According to Blake, the casual attitude of Christie and DeSantis is an odd position to take, considering they're trailing Trump heavily in the polls.
Blake says it's entirely possible that things could shift in favor of either DeSantis or Christie. "Lots of things can happen," Blake writes. "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."
Blake points out that in 2016, Trump ran as an outsider and as a challenger to the establishment. Now, he is the establishment, which opens the door for another candidate to take on the outsider role. Nevertheless, Trump is still able to portray himself as "the voice of the outsider right."
Read the full op-ed over at The Washington Post.