A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds President Biden losing to a generic Republican in a 2024 match up, 46% to 37%.

However, Biden holds small leads over four actual Republicans, including Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz and Mike Pence.

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) seems awfully serious about launching a primary challenge to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Punchbowl News reports.

Gallego went to New York over the weekend to meet with some of Sinema’s donors about a possible Senate run in 2024.

“Mike Pompeo’s political action committee spent $30,000 on media training from last March to June — the most on any service beyond payroll during the first six months of 2021,” Axios reports.

“The former secretary of State hasn’t just been losing weight but working to hone his media skills amid speculation about a possible presidential run, records show.”

“The spending highlights the premium Pompeo places on upgrading his personal and political brand, amid a renewed presence on the airwaves.”

Amy Walter writes that “there’s growing evidence from both quantitative and qualitative sources,” that Donald Trump’s “path to a 2024 GOP nomination may not be as smooth as one would assume.”

“These aren’t anti-Trump types. They like Trump. They’d support a candidate for a down-ballot contest like Senate or House who had Trump’s backing. But, they are not sure they want a re-run.”

Rich Lowry: “After Trump’s presidency, the party is more populist, focused on the culture war, resistant to media narratives and skeptical of business — and it would remain so if Trump retired tomorrow and promised never to utter another word about politics.”

“Although in many ways an orthodox conservative, DeSantis covers all these bases. Importantly, he’s a lightning rod for criticism from the left — now a major plus for Republican voters — and gives as good as he gets in clashes with the media. There are few causes that light up the Republican base that he doesn’t find a way to address, whether on big tech or critical race theory, and he has emerged as the party’s exemplar on the pandemic, with his strenuous opposition to lockdowns and mandates. This gives him credibility with Trump voters and the foundation to compete with Trump, not as a critic or scold, but as someone who can do it better and, in a few instances, perhaps go further.”

“In fact, it is likely that the most successful line of attack against a potential candidate Trump will prove, one way or the other, to come from the right.”

This is a remarkable finding from the new AP-NORC poll: When asked if they would like to see President Biden run for re-election, just 28% said yes, while 70% said no.

That 70% is likely a combination of people who think he’s done a bad job and those who think he’s too old.

“Joe Manchin made clear that his party’s push to isolate him and fellow centrist Kyrsten Sinema won’t force his hand on rules changes, once again rejecting Democrats’ proposed reforms to the Senate’s filibuster rules,” Politico reports.

“The West Virginia Democrat actually seems to welcome the isolation. He told reporters ahead of a Democratic Caucus meeting he would not go along with instituting a talking filibuster, which could be used to evade the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, nor would he entertain a rules change by a simple majority.”

A year out of office, Donald Trump “feels increasingly emboldened to remain in politics after watching top Republicans bend to his will despite his role in the January 6 insurrection and because of the myriad challenges President Joe Biden has faced during his first term so far,” CNN reports.

One current Trump adviser said the former president was “still pretty dejected up until a few months ago, when his whole demeanor started changing the worse things became for Biden.” Only then, the adviser said, did Trump begin “seriously thinking about 2024 and what he needs to do this year so that he’s in a solid position for another campaign.”

Fox News host Laura Ingraham told Northern Virginia Magazine that she is not committing to supporting former President Donald Trump if he runs for reelection in 2024.  

Said Ingraham: “I’m not saying I’m there for him yet. But I think whether he runs or not—I mean, his policies worked. Trump’s blueprint for policy — a forward-looking, optimistic set of pro-America policies — that blueprint, without a doubt, is winning.” 

Jonathan Last: “You’re not supposed to remember this, but DeSantis is a smarty-pants, Ivy League elite lawyer who is playacting as a populist crusader. Trump is the real thing.”

“Just look at the booster stuff: DeSantis almost certainly got the booster. But he’s now caught in No Man’s Land where he has positioned himself as quasi anti-vax, even though he’s received the vaccines.”

“Or look at the anti-lockdown rhetoric: DeSantis is pushing revisionist history about how he refused to impose any sort of precautions in Florida.”

“If this turns into a hot war, Trump is going to crush him. Maybe it’s possible to outflank Trump on vaccines, but not if you’re a phony who took the vaccines. Republican primary voters will smell that a mile away.”

“Donald Trump is trashing Ron DeSantis in private as an ingrate with a ‘dull personality’ and no realistic chance of beating him in a potential 2024 showdown,” Axios reports.

“The two are among the most popular Republicans in the country, and as the former president eyes another run in 2024, he’s irked by DeSantis’ popularity and refusal to rule out running against him.”

But has Trump given DeSantis a nickname yet?

Former Vice President Mike Pence writes in the Washington Post in defense of the filibuster and comparing Democrats’ efforts to eliminate it to pass voting rights to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) “has been courting popular conservative media and online figures, an effort that comes as former President Donald Trump appears to be turning on DeSantis,” Politico reports.

“Some of those whom the governor’s staff are wooing are heavily involved in amplifying the anti-vax movement and downplaying the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

Politico: “Presidential campaigns do not start in any definitive way. The 2024 race had ‘already begun’ last June, or was it March, or even before the last election, back in the fall of 2020. Turn up at a Lincoln Day dinner in Portsmouth or Des Moines, and you’ll feast on a smorgasbord of ‘flirts with,’ ‘teases,’ ‘kicks the tires’ and other ‘unofficial starts’ to a presidential campaign.”

“But every four years, there is a moment when the two political parties and the news media decide to stop daydreaming about the next one and jump right in. And sometime during this week’s pundit wish-casting about the Democratic 2024 ticket and the GOP’s threatened debate boycott, between the deconstruction of Mike Pompeo’s weight loss and the run-up to Donald Trump’s first rally of the year, on Saturday, it happened.”

“Ten months before the 2022 midterm elections, Washington’s head is firmly in 2024. The proximate cause of the shift in perspective, as so often happens, is Trump.”