Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, with me, Tina Nguyen. Before we begin, I want to do some cheerleading for my beloved Puck partner Tara Palmeri, who is launching a podcast next week, Somebody’s Gotta Win, on Bill Simmons’ Ringer network, focused exclusively on the presidential election. Check out the trailer here and make sure to subscribe. It’s gonna be good.

This evening, I pose an existential question to you all, Zen master-style: What is the sound of one man not debating? In other words, what is the purpose of a presidential debate if the most likely winner does not even show up? Plenty, it turns out—you just have to prod a bit beneath the surface.

But first, here’s Abby Livingston with the latest on Capitol Hill…

An utterly indispensable, high-minded, and, yes, occasionally dishy readout of what our lawmakers are really legislating behind closed doors.

By Abby Livingston

• Senator Chris Van Hollen endorsed Angela Alsobrooks yesterday for the seat occupied by retiring Senator Ben Cardin, adding his name to the growing list of Maryland powerbrokers—from Steny Hoyer and Kweisi Mfume to a long list of state legislators—backing Alsobrooks over rivals David Trone and Will Jawando, among others.

  Of course, anything could happen in this all-but-determinative primary, which is full of politically ambitious insiders on the outskirts of Washington. Trone is already putting big money ($10 million) into his campaign. And Jawando, who worked for Obama when he was still just a senator, has a fascinating list of campaign donors, including Bill Burton (along with his wife and former DCCC Executive Director Kelly Burton); former speechwriter and Crooked Media co-founders Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor; Reggie Love (who also donated to Alsobrooks), Jim Margolis, Cecilia Muñoz and Greg Schultz.

  And the list goes on. Jawando is also pulling support from the network surrounding his wife, Michele, a former Kirsten Gillibrand staffer who remains well-regarded in that world. (Past and current Gillibrand advisers Matt Canter, Glen Caplin, and Jeff Pollock have all chipped in.) Then there are the miscellaneous bold-faced names on the Jawando donor roll: Bill Clinton’s White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart; Chicago Congresswoman Robin Kelly; and Pelosi alumnus Tom Manatos, who runs an influential Capitol Hill job networking website. Finally, for some flash, there is West Wing star Bradley Whitford, Better Call Saul actor Bob Odenkirk, radio host Tavis Smiley, and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.

  Even with all that support, Jawando only raised about $500,000 compared to Alsobrooks’ $1.7 million and Trone’s self-funding. And while Jawando represents the powerful and moneyed Montgomery County as an at-large councilman, he has a mixed political record. He previously ran for the Maryland House in 2014 and also for the Maryland 8th congressional seat when Van Hollen vacated it to run for Senate. Jawando placed fifth there in 2016, behind the eventual winner, Jamie Raskin, and second-place finisher Trone, who ran the next year in the neighboring 6th Congressional District.

Expectations are for a muted, lower-rated debate by historical standards, though viewership will likely benefit somewhat from it being hosted by Fox. Nevertheless, the stakes are high for the handful of wannabe Trump alternatives who will be hoping to consolidate support if the frontrunner stumbles or, you know, ends up in prison. They’ll also be fighting to generate earned media through calculated-to-go-viral moments with the goal of supercharging their polling and fundraising in order to meet whatever thresholds the R.N.C. sets for the next primary debate. (It remains to be seen whether Christie, Pence or Trump will be barred from debates for declining to abide by the R.N.C. requirement that each candidate publicly pledge to support the eventual nominee.) Sure, Trump doesn’t need to attend, but for the rest of these candidates, media oxygen is a basic requirement for a minimally viable campaign, and they won’t last long without it.

The dynamic of this year’s Republican primary, however, can’t be compared to 2012, or even 2016, when a series of candidate boomlets allowed for the impression, at least, that it could be anyone’s race. This time around, there’s really only enough crawlspace for a single Trump rival, if he or she can consolidate voter support, to have a shot at winning New Hampshire or Iowa. “You can’t just survive this debate,” one party insider noted, comparing the debates to a roller-derby match wherein the only way to climb the leaderboard is to knock rivals out. “They all have to win. Surviving this debate is not a win for anybody.”

Alas, many right-of-center Republicans have come to the same conclusion. “Ideally, in a perfect world, in a normal world, you would come out [on the debate stage] as thoughtful, smart, and somebody who would make G.O.P. voters think Hey, maybe I should rethink my support for Donald Trump,” said an establishment-aligned party operative. More realistically, he conceded, the best a non-Trump candidate can hope for is to “come out as a fan favorite who would be a second or third choice.” Such a candidate might be competitive in Iowa or New Hampshire, or even win one of those states, giving them a chance to demonstrate their electoral viability before Trump sweeps Super Tuesday and wrecks the delegate math.

One wild card may be Ramaswamy, the Trumpy chatterbox biotech executive and political neophyte who has surged in recent polling, occasionally topping Scott and even DeSantis. Notably, Ramaswamy is the one candidate who hasn’t been campaigning as if he actually wants to bury Trump. Unlike the other candidates, Ramaswamy has not made his candidacy a referendum on Trump’s unruly governance style. In fact, he has often praised it. “Vivek really deeply respects Trump,” his campaign advisor Tricia McLaughlin told me. The only difference she mentioned was their stance on various policy issues, where she said Ramaswamy was likely further to the right.

The respect is mutual: Ramaswamy is the only candidate who Trump has openly praised on Truth Social, and the only one whom MAGA voters seem to have positive feelings for, even if they don’t plan on voting for him. In fact, I keep hearing from MAGA voters that they’d be keeping an eye out for the 38-year-old as a potential presidential candidate in 2028—the cycle, incidentally, they wish that DeSantis would have waited for. On the trail, I’ve yet to see any 2024 candidate get applause from activist audiences other than Ramaswamy. Might he pick up the MAGA vote if Trump, for whatever reason, decides to drop out?

Whatever the case, Ramaswamy will be looking to make his mark on the debate stage, seizing the opportunity to introduce himself to voters outside the Fox News cinematic universe and Joe Rogan blogosphere. “I don’t think Vivek’s under any illusion that he’s going to suddenly be getting the nomination, or on the road to get the nomination,” the establishment-aligned operative noted. “But maybe you do well enough to become a cabinet secretary, maybe even be considered on the shortlist for V.P. At the very least, if you’re Vivek, you come out becoming a national player-slash-figure in the G.O.P.”

On this score, Scott’s allies are optimistic that the charismatic South Carolina senator can make inroads with voters, leveraging the debate to boost his name recognition and raise awareness of his inspirational life story: born to a single mother, converting to Christianity as a teenager, breaking the cycle of poverty and reaching the heights of political success. “When you get to know him, you like him, and you can’t say that about some of the other candidates in the race,” said an outside ally working with Scott, referring to DeSantis’s unfortunate reputation for unlikeability. “If your campaign is based on your personal biography and personal story, you need to be able to personally tell it to folks.”

Indeed, the deck seems stacked against DeSantis, who has the most to prove, and the most to lose. Mired at around 15 percent in the polls and losing altitude, DeSantis needs to overcome weeks of terrible news about his campaign’s missteps—overspending, multiple rounds of layoffs, a leadership shakeup, and a seemingly endless stream of awkward interactions and under-capacity events caught on film. Even worse, Chris Christie, of all people, has overtaken DeSantis in New Hampshire, at least according to one recent poll, a state that DeSantis had once hoped to have in his column.

The MAGA comms operative, a DeSantis fan himself, described the stakes in practically existential terms. “The question is, has DeSantis done so much damage to his brand at the national level that he’s no longer viable for 2028?” he wondered. “Now, Americans have short memories, and DeSantis has been a fantastic governor. And so I certainly hope not. [But] is there a scenario where he really overperforms on the debate stage and is able to get back above 20 percent? Maybe that’s what winning would look like, but genuinely, I find that a much less likely scenario.”

The potential format innovations are endless. “I think he’s just sitting there at Mar-a-Lago with a big screen, popcorn, and Big Macs and Diet Cokes everywhere,” teased one plugged-in MAGA operative I spoke with, predicting that a Twitch-style livestream with Trump commenting on the debate “would get probably 10 times the viewership than the actual debate.”

It’s not such a crazy idea, even if the stream failed to beat Fox for viewership. Carlson has not yet conducted an interview with Trump during this election cycle. And, as I’ve reported in the past, Carlson is still fuming over his abrupt defenestration from Fox, viewing his cancellation as corporate censorship against him, and would embrace just about any opportunity to say eff you to his former employer.

It would also be an historic middle finger to Trump’s primary opponents, who are counting on this first debate as their best, and possibly last, chance to make an impression with voters. “Even if it does reduce the size of the audience, I would just say: this is still by and large going to be the biggest audience you’re gonna get,” the Scott ally said.