Opinion | Trump Made a Big Mistake by Announcing Early

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A move that should show his strength shows his weakness; a move intended to exclude other candidates from the race is an invitation to other candidates to enter; a move that should have served notice of his continued dominance of the party points to its potential end.

He has been surpassed as an internet troll by Elon Musk, and as a vote grabber by Ron DeSantis.

He has managed to capture the worst of both worlds largely out of sight while being embroiled in several damaging controversies.

His midterms took a turn for the worse, with the eventual defeat of one of his key political projects, Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate run-off.

And Trump’s entry didn’t increase his poll numbers, or even stabilize them. He continues to slide against DeSantis, with a USA Today/Suffolk poll showing him trailing the Florida governor 56-33 in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup and a new Wall Street Journal poll that shows DeSantis beat Trump 52-38.

In other words, it’s hard to imagine how Trump could have had a worse month running. One could usually say, as a way of exaggerating to emphasize the point, that it might have been worse if he had dined with a Nazi but, of course, he did.

It was too early, and too early to count him out. Republicans remain fearful of him, and we still don’t know if the only potential candidate to show strength against him, DeSantis, will run, or how he will perform once in the race, especially in a potentially crowded field.

If Trump wins the nomination, however, it will involve recovering from his disastrous announcement and results. He clearly believed that the act of announcing in and of itself would be enough to cement his status as top dog.

That’s wrong, and it means he hasn’t thought of the rather crucial question, So now you’re a candidate what do you do?

No media blitz. No country tour. There is no launch policy or any unifying theme. Trump is sitting at Mar-a-Lago, as usual, moving from one silly controversy to another.

If it’s too early to take too many polls, Trump is in a uniquely vulnerable spot. Let’s assume the latest surveys are in the ballpark. Its one thing to be trailing if you are a new figure on the national stage who still has room to grow; it’s another if you have a universal name ID and everyone already has a highly developed view of you.

It will be difficult for Trump to find a second act, when his actions have not changed since 2015. Besides, even if he claims to have turned a new leaf, who at this point will believe him?

He has no easy lever to use to change the narrative. It’s not as if he can have a good legislative session next year like governors who are thinking of running, or use his executive powers to pick profitable fights.

He cannot give speeches on the Senate floor, lead legislative battles, or seek high-profile confrontations with witnesses during congressional testimony.

Maybe there aren’t even any exciting new events he can pull off to get the attention of the voters or the media. His signature, of course, is his rallies. They were fresh and new in 2015 and 2016, and quite powerful throughout his presidency and immediately after. Today, they are as old and familiar as a Rolling Stones concert.

Most damaging to Trump is that association with him in general and Stop the Steal election denialism in particular proved politically toxic in the midterms.

Maybe other Republicans can avoid that nonsense in the future. But not Trump.

He is capable of making some adjustments. He dropped the birther talk in 2016. But he was more personally convinced by the idea that the 2020 election had been stolen. , he still has to answer questions about it.

Its possible exogenous events may help him. Perhaps an indictment could give him a shot-in-the-arm. I thought it would get him the nomination. But now that Republicans increasingly consider it a problem that he has so much baggage, throwing an indictment indefinitely on top of all the others strapped to the roof of the Trump bus could hurt him.

Yes, Trump had a big bump after the Mar-a-Lago search, but it wasn’t permanent. After it became clear that he did have classified documents and that the case was, at best, more complicated than the initial narrative of an out-of-control, politically vindictive FBI suggested, Trumps bounce fade.

If Trump is not a winner, and not fresh and interesting, and not too ideologically different from other Republicans like DeSantis, the case for him begins to get awfully weak.

These things will be true even if Trump doesn’t announce it, but if he doesn’t get in, people will wonder if he’ll immediately look stronger when he’s actually in the race. Now, he answered that question for his opponents definitively in the negative.

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