Playbook: “The biggest x-factor is the candidate himself. In 2007, McCain was a household name. He had a reputation for saying what he believed. He had a certain charisma. He had developed enormous amounts of goodwill with the political press. He seemed authentic to voters. He drew on all of it to help him claw his way back.”
“Today, as DeSantis begins an Iowa bus tour sponsored by the Never Back Down super PAC, the inevitable question is this: Does he have what it takes to own his failures and truly reset? Or is he setting himself up not to reset, but to rewind — simply playing through his campaign’s missteps a second time?”

