The Election Recap: June 16, 2023

Welcome back to The Week's Election Recap. This special edition serves as an interim one-time update to satisfy you rabid politicos until the 2024 race starts in earnest.

DeSantis declares

After months and months of speculation, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) finally declared his bid for president on May 24. "American decline is not inevitable, it is a choice," DeSantis told Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who moderated the governor's announcement. "And we should choose a new direction — a path that will lead to American revitalization. I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback." Long before he became a candidate, DeSantis was hailed as a potential former President Trump slayer who could appeal to the anti-MAGA swaths of the Republican party and Republican-leaning voters. But that was weeks ago. Now, he seems to have lost some of the mojo that made him so formidable in the first place. That said, Trump clearly still views the governor as a threat, or he wouldn't be name-calling and taunting his opponent so openly.

Poll power

You love 'em, you hate 'em, but you know you can't ignore 'em. It's time to check out poll numbers, particularly as they relate to our two de facto 2024 front-runners, Trump and President Joe Biden. In a Morning Consult poll conducted June 9 through 11, Trump and Biden managed to secure 42% of the vote in a hypothetical matchup. But in a separate analysis from USA Today / Suffolk University, that advantage broke slightly toward Biden, who saw backing from 34% of respondents versus Trump's 32%. A total of 23% of those surveyed said they would vote for an unspecified independent candidate. Above all, the close race indicates voters' clear dissatisfaction with what will likely be their two choices at the ballot box, reported USA Today. And while "support for independent candidates typically fades as elections near," the interest in voting beyond "the two major parties" is, at the moment, "historically high."

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Document drama

So what happens now that Trump has pleaded not guilty in a federal documents probe? As a refresher, the Justice Department last week unveiled charges against the former president for hoarding classified national security documents at his private residence in Florida and allegedly obstructing attempts to get them back. The arresting development followed a bombshell report from CNN that claimed special counsel Jack Smith had obtained an incriminating audio recording of Trump, in which the former president contradicted past rationalizations for holding onto the 300-some classified documents. Now, according to The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, the charges could serve as a "destructive intervention into the 2024 election," one Democrats are all too happy to welcome, given that it thrusts the spotlight off Biden and onto Trump. Indeed, added Peter Baker at The New York Times, the question now becomes whether Trump's collection of allegations "will someday weigh him down among Republican voters who otherwise like him, especially if there's a third and maybe a fourth indictment." Among many of his critics, however, there's a sense the former president will survive this, especially since the GOP's reaction to the news has once more illustrated "a remarkably frustrating phenomenon," Politico reported: "that in his moments of profound political weakness, the very people trying to unseat [Trump] often rush to his defense."

Hanging chads:

• The mystery of the Z-list candidate [link]
• Julie Chavez Rodriguez: The woman behind Biden's big 2024 bid [link]
• Does CNN's "meltdown" spell doom for centrist cable news? [link]
• Can Ron DeSantis beat Trump? [link]
• 3 extraordinary ways Trump could avoid punishment in his documents debacle [link]
• The debate about Biden's age and mental fitness [link]

Coming up:

• Biden will head to Philadelphia on Saturday for his first 2024 campaign event, a rally with union members.
• Prepare for an impending onslaught of news surrounding Trump's various legal troubles, including the aforementioned documents case, an indictment in New York and a probe into his activity in the 2020 election in Georgia.