Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, I’m Tara Palmeri. In tonight’s edition, the four obvious post-debate truths that everyone knows but nobody’s talking about. (Plus, check out my new podcast Somebody’s Gotta Win for my post-debate analysis with Axios’ Alex Thompson.)

But first…

The latter question did not make it onto the broadcast, but there is a clip on the website. When asked by correspondent Cecilia Vega if he was cleaning up the streets of California as part of his political strategy to run for president, he brushed it off, saying it was “table stakes” and “part of a foundational responsibility of anyone who gets into my position.” But when asked blankly “Is that a yes or a no?” He said “That was a never ending response to your question,” and never really answered.

And now a congressional update from Abby Livingston…

• Young Guns: After a decade of congressional dysfunction, shutdowns are ingrained into the muscle memory of the political class. But for many, many sitting House members, this is all new. Thanks to big and small election waves and a crush of retirements during the Trump era, the House has seen remarkable turnover in recent cycles. By my count, about a third of the House was not in office during the 2018-2019 shutdown and almost two-thirds of House members were not in Congress during the 2013 shutdown.

  That shutdown, which lasted 16 days, remains the primary point of historical comparison. Of course, one of the most significant differences now is the degree of personal enmity between the two parties, and especially within the G.O.P. caucus compared to ten years ago. Back then, Ted Cruz was the ringleader of the troublemakers—a cross-chamber band that drove John Boehner nuts, hosting cloak-and-dagger secret meetings that disrupted negotiations as he made a policy case: Repeal the A.C.A. or shut the government down.

  Now, Cruz-haters of yore concede that his protest seems quaint in comparison to today’s chief antagonist, Matt Gaetz, whose conflict with Kevin McCarthy isn’t about policy as much as it is personal. Republicans fear that this personal animus is going to make it incredibly hard to negotiate a path out of this (likely) shutdown.

• Menendez’s Cash Hoard: Bob Menendez emerged defiant from a meeting with his Democratic Senate colleagues, insisting he will not step down as the senior senator from New Jersey. This comes despite widespread calls in Washington and back home for him to resign after federal officials indicted him on Friday.

  Menendez will almost certainly take a fundraising hit going forward, but the former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman has quite the war chest—$7.8 million in cash on hand—at his disposal for a campaign, as of his July campaign finance report. Two of the names most frequently batted around as challengers also had a solid amount of cash-on-hand (at least for a House member): Mikie Sherrill had about $1.2 million, while Andy Kim reported about $800,000. But it’s Josh Gottheimer, a representative from wealthy Bergen County, who has the most astonishing amount of money to take into a potential statewide race: $15 million—a little more than twice what Menendez has at his disposal.

• Et tu, Sanz?: Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar’s former spokesman and district director, Jose Sanz, just announced a Republican campaign to oust his old boss next year, per The Texas Tribune. Cuellar had a tough reelection last year, both in his primary and general election. And there is some residual anxiety among Democrats about South Texas after a robust Republican offensive during the last two cycles.

  Cuellar has modernized his political operation, making it much harder to depose his hold on the Laredo-based district. And he had a pretty good general election performance last year, winning by 14 points after a legitimate scare in 2020. But it is noteworthy that Cuellar’s top Democratic primary opponent over the last two cycles, Jessica Cisneros, worked in his office as an intern, and now he faces another staffer who is running as a Republican. Must be something in the office water...

The polling, after all, is overwhelming: Trump has extended his lead over his rivals by more than 40 points, a fact that nobody on stage appeared ready to grapple with. Toward the end of the night, as the lead-up to an eye-rolling question about which rival they’d “vote off the island,” Fox News moderator Dana Perino expressed their dilemma in stark terms: “It’s now obvious that if you all stay in the race, former president Donald Trump wins the nomination,” she said. “None of you have indicated that you’re dropping out.”

DeSantis attempted to push back, offering that “Polls don’t elect presidents, voters elect presidents.” But in many ways, Perino’s challenge was the most profound moment of the night. With just over three months until the Iowa caucuses, nobody seems to have a realistic plan to leapfrog Trump, short of the frontrunner landing himself in jail. (Even then, his polling might go up.) For now, the code of omerta is equally strong among G.O.P. consultants and operatives, who are still publicly engaged in the consensual hallucination that another candidate might have a chance.

Privately, however, the Republican professional class is more cynical than ever following last night’s debate. Here are the four things that everyone is thinking, but not yet saying out loud.

At the very least, donors need to see candidates rising in the polls, and the only way to do that is to take a bite out of someone else’s numbers. That’s why Vivek Ramaswamy, the jabbering billionaire-ish millennial wild card, who arrived on the scene mere months ago, and whose polling hovers around that of Nikki Haley and DeSantis, has become a constant target. There was hope in Haley’s camp that with another strong showing this week, donors might start opening up their wallets.

And last night, Haley was feisty: she stuck her jabs, something she’s been reluctant to do in the past, and she scored the moment of the night with her takedown of Ramaswamy (“every time I hear you I feel a little bit dumber”). She sparred with Tim Scott, whom she appointed to the Senate as governor in 2012, and she even took a shot at the race’s number two, DeSantis, though both did well enough that neither is likely to net much movement over the other. “No ‘big looks like seven figure moves’ for Nikki Haley,” the major donor said. “There’s nothing there to radically change [the dynamic of the race]. This isn’t the time to make the big ask.”

DeSantis met expectations, improving upon his stilted performance from the last debate (despite his creepy smile), but on the whole he has unperformed. “DeSantis’ people are like, ‘Wow, look what he did.’ He was better; it wasn’t a breakout,” said the major donor. “He just wasn’t as agitated and weird as the last time.”

The cool reception to DeSantis among donors has been compounded by a sense that the Florida governor doesn’t necessarily need the money, given that he had $12 million hard dollars in the second quarter, even if he has burned through it, not to mention the $100 million or so sitting inside his super PAC, the Jeff Roe-Axiom controlled vehicle Never Back Down. Donors I’ve spoken to are saying they’re in wait-and-see mode, needing DeSantis to make some substantial improvements on his own before they throw good money after bad.

And it’s not just DeSantis who is losing the support of the Republican money class. “Their backers’ realize it’s coming to an end soon,” said an advisor to major donors. “It was totally apparent, when they were talking over each other and trying to slam each other.” Soon, the candidates will have to disclose their Q3 fundraising totals before the third debate, in Miami, which is when we’ll really learn who’s running on jet fumes and who has the juice.

Of course, there are the candidates for whom money is no object. Doug Burgum, the tech billionaire turned North Dakota governor, seems to have figured out a way to buy his way onto the stage every time, despite his low name ID with voters. Tim Scott still has the financial support of Oracle mega-billionaire Larry Ellison, who, as my partner Teddy Schleifer has reported, has committed tens of millions of dollars to Scott’s presidential bid.

Nevertheless, the bar for making each subsequent debate keeps rising higher. Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Scott, and Burgum who have yet to qualify for the next debate, where the R.N.C.-imposed threshold has been raised to 70,000 unique donors and 4 percent in the polls. Those numbers become harder and harder to reach as the electorate becomes more educated about the candidates, up-for-grabs voters begin to lock their choices in, and the top frontrunners begin to coalesce. From here on out it’s a zero sum game.

Sure, if there was only one candidate against Trump, money would surely pile in from the likes of the Koch network and the deepest-pocketed anti-Trump donors. But alas this seems unlikely, and not simply because no candidate has emerged so victorious from a debate that they’ve started substantially stealing support from the others on stage. This Hail Mary consolidation argument was made in 2016, too, but the hypothesis remains unproven.

At the very least, it’s boldly presumptuous to assume that if DeSantis were to drop out his supporters would rally around Haley or Scott instead of just flocking to Trump. “I don’t know that there was much said on the stage last night that would shake the people who were with Trump from not being with him,” said a longtime party aide. “It’s possible that there are soft leaning voters towards Trump, maybe an Iowa or New Hampshire voter who found Christie’s line that Trump is disrespecting the voters by not showing up compelling. It’s just so not close. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to be.”

Of course, it’ll take much more than money; Youngkin may struggle to get on the ballot in many states, depending on what time he decides to make his grand entrance. And he would still face the same problems as every other candidate on the stage. Indeed, if the Youngkin wishcasting demonstrates anything, it’s only to underscore that many donors are morons or naifs when it comes to understanding the reality of the modern G.O.P.

“I think Youngkin’s people are smart to harness unhappiness among the donor class for the current candidates,” said the longtime party hand. “There’s nothing that would change the race with the Youngkin candidacy that isn’t being offered by the other candidates. It’s not like Glenn Youngkin is going to get in the race and a significant number of Trump voters are going to say ‘He’s the guy we’re missing.’ And he’s not going to take from all of the rest of the candidates, especially not from the likes of Tim Scott or Nikki Haley. For Youngkin to get into the race, he needs to peel off 20 percent of Trump’s share and get all of the candidates’ voters. ”

Sure, it’s all well and good for Youngkin, who is term-limited and can draft off the chatter, keeping his name out there and giving him a reason to keep flirting with donors. “The Youngkin chatter feels planted and planned out because we’re so disappointed that DeSantis isn’t the clear alternative,” said an Iowa operative. “It helps Youngkin’s brand, but I hope this isn’t consultants trying to make a couple bucks.”

If there’s one thing for certain, the MAGA phenomenon that Trump unleashed will still be a major factor in American politics next cycle, and how you tangled with him this year may affect your chances in 2028. (They’ll likely all want his endorsement, and his base, probably even if he’s incarcerated.) It may explain why all of the candidates, except for Christie, have essentially tip-toed around the man and his record, in hopes of preserving their viability. Of course, it’s a Catch-22: If they started attacking Trump from the beginning, maybe they wouldn’t be in this position now, looking like a bunch of “JV” players who never stepped up. I’m sure Mike Pompeo is privately relieved that he didn’t jump in.

As f​or DeSantis, who’s endured relentless attacks from Trump, how he manages the support of the median Trump voter will be critical to whether he has a political career beyond Florida in the years to come. If he becomes a big champion for Trump, a warrior-surrogate on the trail, that may provide a lifeboat to keep his prospects alive from this cycle to the next. But it’s a hard pivot to manage, as evidenced by the path of Ted Cruz, the last Roe-advised presidential client, who famously bowed to Trump, and was accepted back into the fold, but never quite recovered his political mojo.

“It’s worse if you stay in, you get 10 percent in Iowa and then you want to be there next time? How he handles the drop out, and if he joins the Trump team, is what matters more,” said a G.O.P. operative. “What does he do with the loss? I don’t know that he could suck it up and do that, because he’s kind of a dick. It’s definitely personal.”