DeSantis Sets Himself Up for Humiliation in Iowa

Like a political Babe Ruth, DeSantis calls his shot. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

It’s commonplace in American politics for candidates, their flacks, and their allies to exaggerate their prospects for electoral success. The idea is that this advance spin will bamboozle donors, enthuse voters, and create media echoes that generate more phony positive vibes.

But a notable exception to the idea that pretending you’re going to win can sometimes help you win is the presidential nominating contest. This marathon event involves multiple caucuses and primaries, not just a one-and-done election in which nobody’s going to remember a candidate’s fatuous lies about their impending victory. In this environment, it’s important for campaigns to skillfully play the expectations game, lowballing predictions while conveying a sense of grim underdog determination so they can shock the world by overperforming and building momentum for future contests.

That’s why it was really surprising to hear Ron DeSantis flatly predict that he is going to win the Iowa caucuses, as Politico reported:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has staked his campaign’s success on his performance in Iowa, where he’s secured a key endorsement from Gov. Kim Reynolds and recently completed a 99-county campaign swing.

“We’re going to win Iowa. I think it’s going to help propel us to the nomination,” the GOP presidential hopeful said during an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Indeed, the Florida governor seemed most concerned that pundits would point out that recent Iowa winners (Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012, Ted Cruz in 2016) didn’t ultimately win the GOP nomination:

“I do recognize that there have been people that have won who have not gone on to win the nomination,” DeSantis told NBC’s Kristen Welker. But this year, he said, is different as the once-crowded field has winnowed to just a few big-name candidates.

“Ultimately, Republican voters are going to have the choice of Donald Trump, which I think would make the election a referendum on him and a lot of the issues that he’s dealing with, or me.”

Given the many troubles afflicting the DeSantis campaign and his two super-PACs lately, perhaps he thought calling his shot as Babe Ruth once legendarily did (hitting a World Series home run after pointing toward the fences) would serve as a tonic for his beleaguered troops. But the reality is that, barring a miracle, he’s almost certainly not going to beat Donald Trump in Iowa. He trails the former president by nearly 30 points in the RealClearPolitics polling averages for the first-in-the-nation caucuses. And while there have certainly been upsets in Iowa before, no one has come back from that big a deficit this late in the day, particularly against a front-runner like Trump with an intensely committed base of support and few apparent vulnerabilities that he hasn’t already refuted.

DeSantis’s real challenge in Iowa, moreover, is to hold second place against Nikki Haley, who has been gaining on him in the polls there (actually tying him in the most recent gold-standard Iowa Poll from the Des Moines Register, NBC News, and Mediacom) and passing him as if he’s standing still in polling of New Hampshire and South Carolina. Aside from momentum and her long-standing status as a media darling, Haley is now getting a lot of friendly attention from big-time Republican donors, even as the DeSantis campaign grinds toward judgment day in Iowa depending on high-profile endorsements and a ground game built back when it was flush with money. The obvious play for DeSantis is to treat an Iowa win over Haley (which is sufficiently in doubt to create some drama) as a world-changing event that will catapult him back into contention in the later states. If he can’t meet that threshold, his goose is cooked anyway, so there’s virtually no risk in boldly predicting success.

Instead, DeSantis is setting his supporters up for disappointment when January 15 rolls around and he doesn’t win Iowa. Perhaps he needs an audacious claim to rally his divided, blame-shifting team of rivals. Or maybe he’s just facing facts: Unless he or Haley finds a way to beat Trump sooner rather than later, this whole nomination contest has been a waste of everyone’s time.