And Then There Were Two

The news that Ron DeSantis had thrown in the towel — “suspended my campaign” in the  losers’ parlance of this and every year’s presidential races — broke early in the afternoon, too late, and no doubt by design, for the talking heads of the networks’ Sunday morning pundits to seize the moment and gloat about their prescience in expecting it all along. True, after Iowa and running a poor third in the state polls before New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday (Wednesday in Australia), bailing out right now made sense for a faltering, cash-strapped candidate. But grim reality is not what aspirants to the Oval Office generally recognise, so often clinging in hope and self-deceit to their ambitions long after the ebb tide of support has left them on the beach. Think here of George Bush the Elder harrying Ronald Reagan in 1980 or, 28 years later on the other side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton refusing to concede until very late in the game that Obama had her whipped. In 2016, she had her…