Foreshadowing the 2024 Presidential Election
What the debate between Florida governor Ron DeSantis and California governor Gavin Newsom can tell us about the 2024 presidential election.
With 2024 ever looming and campaigning ramping up, with the major contenders out and about greeting and rallying voters, its worth looking at what the main issues of the coming election will be and how they would benefit or hurt the individual candidates chances at the presidency. The deep red state governor Ron DeSantis and liberal blue state governor Gavin Newsom recent debate give us a reliable insight to what politicians think the American people value.
The debate despite being between the respective governors of California and Florida was overshadowed by national politics in Washington DC, with Mr DeSantis using the debate to raise his presidential bid and Mr Newsom working to defend the Biden administration and subsequently hurt the GOPs chances of a red White House.
A relatively recent report by the London School of Economics authored by Kevin Fahey states that Ron DeSantis stands a better chance of beating current President Biden than Donald J. Trump. Democrats are hyper aware of this and the debate was an attempt, which is a part of a larger democratic plan to win the presidency (bigger then Mr DeSantis), to get Mr DeSantis out of the presidential race before he can start hurting Joe Biden's prospects of re-election. Mr DeSatis of course tried to use the debate in a way that would get Newsom to either condemn some of Mr Biden's decisions or state that he was seeking the presidency, if Ron DeSantis would have managed that the democrats would find themselves in turmoil and with negative media attention.
The debate started with the issue of taxes, quickly morphing into economics, specifically "bidenomics" or badenomics as DeSantis might say. Both the candidates spoke about working class people, middle class people and people on benefits, trying to persuade these huge demographics that they were right and that the other person simply wasn't telling the truth. In fact the debate was just that, a debate of truths, the respective candidates had different numbers and interpretations about all the issues, not to mention economics. Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom were of course very selective of their data to ensure that they came out looking like the winner, however, their incoherent numbers and interpretations may in the end just have confused voters about whose right.
This gives us the vital insight that 2024 will most likely be won by the candidate that best convinces the electorate of their personal economic competence. Talk about the environment, democracy and social justice may be hot topics during times of prosperity, however, when paying the bills becomes ever harder many simply default to voting based upon who can make their lives better from an economic stand point. Mr Newsom tried to further the re-election campaign for Joe Biden by speaking about historically low unemployment and huge new job creation. Ron DeSantis' simple, yet effective, response to this was to speak about his own economic competency and how he had helped people directly, laughing at the prospect that any of Biden's measures may have helped. Otherwise most of this part of the debate was just loud mouthing and speaking over each other, yet again a useful insight. Who ever manages to be heard in the coming camping stands a better chance of victory.
Furthermore, the covid-19 pandemic was an area of contention, with both sides trying to place the other in a position of guilt in the eyes of the viewers. Mr DeSantis attacked Calafornia's lockdowns and Mr Newsom bombarded his opponent with the responsibility of tens of thousand of Floridian deaths due to the Florida governors weaker lockdown restrictions. This will be important in 2024, especially if its a Biden Trump rematch, because the American people hurt during the pandemic and if somebody assumes the blame of that hurt, willingly or not, their campaign will have been over before it even started. Future debates are likely to see a lot of the blame game, the question is if there will be a winner.
Border security and security from a general perspective were crucial aspects of the debate. Surprisingly: both opponents continued to viciously attack each other on their records, DeSantis throwing jabs at Californian safety and Newsom punching right back with school safety. The American public feels the least safe in 3 decades according to Gallup, that means winning the trust of the electorate within safety will be a cornerstone of any candidates triumph.
As mentioned earlier this was a debate about truths and who to trust. One of the most commonly used phrases throughout the debate was "its just a fact" implying that what ever the other person has to say is an untruth, or in other words a lie. The American peoples deciphering of fact and fiction will in the end make or break the contenders.
If you want to watch the debate in full do so here.
