Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, I’m Tara Palmeri.

Tonight, a closer look at Ron DeSantis’s troubles in New Hampshire, where he once trounced Trump, then dropped to a clear second to Donald Trump, and has since stumbled to fifth place. Plus: the impolitic conversations Democrats and Republicans are really having in Washington about the shutdown.

Meanwhile, make sure to check out Tuesday’s episode of my new podcast, Somebody’s Gotta Win, where former Speaker Newt Gingrich warns that Kevin McCarthy will need 10 smoking guns from the impeachment inquiry to pull off a vote. Next week, I’ll be coming to you from the G.O.P. debates in California, where we’ll see if any candidates can punch their way out of the pack.

Before we get to the main event, here’s Teddy Schleifer with some news from the 2024 fundraising scene…

• Silicon Valley for Vivek: A Murderers’ Row of Silicon Valley heavyweights are throwing a seven-figure event for Vivek Ramaswamy next week, according to an invite that made its way to me. Billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya and his wife, Nathalie, are hosting an “intimate dinner and discussion” with Ramaswamy next Friday at their house in the Bay Area. The co-hosts include top crypto investors Matt Huang, of Paradigm, and Haun Ventures’ Katie Haun (who is also raising for Tim Scott the day prior); Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Capital; and, of course, Chamath’s bestie on the All-In podcast, David Sacks (who is hosting DeSantis the day prior). The event, I’m told, is selling tickets for $50,000, minimum, and is expected to bring in $1 million for Vivek’s super PAC, American Exceptionalism.

  Vivek has real momentum among tech’s biggest players, but his event is just one of many Silicon Valley fundraising festivities happening next week when everyone is in California for the debate and then the California G.O.P. convention. As I’ve reported over in my private email, The Stratosphere (sign up here!), other fundraisers are being hosted next week for Scott, DeSantis and even Joe Biden. Today, I learned of yet another Scott event, hosted by a real estate banker. Even debate-skipper Donald Trump is getting in on the action, I’m told, with multiple fundraising events scheduled in the Los Angeles area next week, including one in Beverly Hills. –Teddy Schleifer

• Shutdown Home Economics: Most Capitol Hill insiders project a two-to-three week shutdown. But should it last even longer, members might feel pressure from a constituency that doesn’t often push back: their subordinates. Some members are beginning to worry about staff paychecks in late October.

  But I can’t help but wonder if that is the case in all offices. Many, many members are personally wealthy and long ago lost a sense of financial normalcy. Over the years, I’ve combed through hundreds of financial disclosures and have been struck by how many members make more money annually in stock dividends alone than their staff members make in their salaries (which are often below living wage standards…). And the ones who aren’t rich often lean on their campaign accounts to cover plenty of their daily expenses (cell phones, dinners, Ubers, etcetera).

  It’s plain as day that some Capitol Hill staffers benefit from parental financial support (a Hill job is a great stint to build the law school resume). But many staffers are on their own, and I find it highly unlikely that anyone making around $40,000 in a high cost-of-living city like Washington has the savings to easily withstand a missed paycheck. And I also find it unlikely that a number of members truly understand the scale of stress and disruption this potential shutdown can put on the people who work for them.

• N.R.C.C.’s rough August: The House G.O.P. filed a campaign finance report on Wednesday that showed the committee in a major August fundraising slump. The N.R.C.C. raised just under $3.9 million last month, compared to the D.C.C.C.’s $8.1 million. Both committees had pretty high burn rates—each had about $5 million flying out the door.

  But the Republican numbers are exceptional because it is unusual to be spending more cash than is coming in during an off-year. This is the same pot of money used for much of the television advertising money in the general election. Democrats also have the cash-on-hand advantage, as they sit on $40 million, compared to the Republicans’ $32 million.

  To be sure, an N.R.C.C. tabulation shared with The Washington Post in July showed their vulnerable incumbents were stronger fundraisers than endangered Democratic incumbents. This is key because candidates secure cheaper ad rates than super PACs and much of the committee spending.

But in front of those very state reps and the press, DeSantis exposed himself as an awkward robo-candidate with little feel for the realities of presidential politics: he offered encyclopedic treatises about Florida to people in New Hampshire, who didn’t really care. He couldn’t ably pull off the simplest gestures, like asking voters questions in a diner beyond what’s-your-name. Perhaps worst of all, DeSantis had stayed muted about his presidential aspirations in the intervening window between that January poll and his May swing, allowing a furious Trump to define him unfavorably to the electorate.

Republican candidates feel it’s worth investing in New Hampshire because there’s an opportunity to win over a more moderate and open-minded G.O.P. primary voter, who might be persuaded by an electability argument to ditch Trump. And, of course, New Hampshire provides the momentum necessary to make it to South Carolina, where primary voters are feral for Trump.

But by that time in late May, the bloom was already starting to come off the rose among the donor class, who openly wondered why the hell DeSantis hadn’t announced sooner, why he wasn’t fighting back against Trump’s invectives on Fox News, why he was listening so much to some yokel advisers from Tallahassee, and why he’d created such unnecessary political obstacles by tacking too far to the right on issues like the six-week abortion ban and permitless concealed carry. Nonetheless, DeSantis was still riding high after he announced his campaign and headed to New Hampshire, polling at 22 percent to Trump’s 42 percent. He was the clear leader among Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Mike Pence, who were living in 2-to-3 percent land. And yet, as it turned out, that was the best it was ever going to get.

Matthew Bartlett, a New Hampshire-based G.O.P. consultant, put it more succinctly. “His approach to New Hampshire has been problematic at best,” he said. “The lack of campaigning has only been compounded by the lack of a coherent message. He’s not making an appeal to voters—he’s continued to make a presidential campaign about himself and his record in Florida, instead of explaining for the country.”

Some have suggested that DeSantis simply hasn’t spent enough time in the Granite State. After all, he’s going all-in on Iowa—ostensibly following the playbook of ur-consultant Jeff Roe, who runs his nearly $100 million super PAC “Never Back Down,” and executed the same hit-every-county strategy for Ted Cruz in 2016. The Roe doctrine is actually quite simple: crisscross the first-to-vote caucus state with a far-right, evangelical message, while the super PAC manages a sophisticated ground operation that is advantageous to a caucus. The hope is that a win in Iowa will create just enough momentum for success in New Hampshire.

Of course, The Roe Doctrine was disproved when Cruz could only leverage his Iowa victory into a third-place finish in New Hampshire. He lost to Trump by 24 points on the night that the former reality TV star effectively separated himself from the field. Cruz, like DeSantis is now, polled at 11 percent, basically tying with Jeb Bush for third/fourth place. There’s a risk that Roe could be vulnerable to the same outcome with his new charge. Genuflecting ever rightward for Iowans—calling for a war at the border, releasing outlandish anti-gay videos, calling Gorsuch and Kavanaugh too liberal—can catch up with a candidate in New England. “Why would you hire that team to run that playbook, which is run to the right and expect a different result?” a G.O.P. consultant pointed out.

A New Hampshire Republican politician, who endorsed DeSantis, went a step further. “He’s running too far to the right for himself,” this person told me. “I don’t understand what he’s doing. His whole brand was around being a broad-based coalition uniter guy. Now his brand is, I’m the most hardcore evangelical in Iowa. That’s not who you are. It’s not too late to fix that. There’s a way to message to the Iowa voter and the New Hampshire voter and not change who you are.”

Governor Chris Sununu, who I heard at one time was inclined to endorse DeSantis, seemed to believe that more time in the state could repair his numbers. “Gov. Desantis is a hard worker and still very much in the mix. The state is wide open for candidates to connect with voters,” Sununu told me. “Those who spend the most time here will continue to do well.”

Most of the members I’ve spoken to privately suggest that the shutdown probably won’t have that big of an impact—that a year is a lifetime in electoral politics. But the edge case, they say, comes down to the fact that a growing group of Republicans appear to be welcoming, even inviting, a shutdown. Cringey soundbites from Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz can be used in opposition ads across the country. “It probably won’t matter next year,” a Democratic party operative told me. “But they are daring the public to make it an issue next year. Republicans in 2013 weren’t saying a shutdown doesn’t matter, they were just saying Boehner needs to fix this.”

Downplaying the shutdown isn’t the only impolite conversation being had about the looming crisis. Democrats are looking to Biden and the White House to make sure that this shutdown is painful for Republicans, highlighting the most high-impact programs that don’t get funded, so that constituents feel the effects and remember who started it. So far, the White House has warned that American’s safety and security are at risk during this impending shutdown thanks to MAGA Republicans. But Biden, for his part, has struggled to convey penetrating messages to the broader public, largely because his media exposure remains limited and he lacks command of the bully pulpit. All summer, he has struggled to sell Bidenomics. (The White House is advising allies to not even mention the word Inflation Reduction Act because it belies the problem that people are feeling: inflation.) “No one is sure what Biden will do,” said the Democratic operative.

As the White House stares down this next fight, there’s also a question of whether Biden should stand in stoic contrast to Republicans or engage in the conflict. Biden has never felt comfortable in this Trump-induced era of mudslinging. And the White House seems to be following his lead, not wanting to denigrate the institution.

But some Democrats around his inner circle wonder whether he is letting a political opportunity slip from his hands. Republicans privately admit that Barack Obama was effective in enhancing the brutality of the 2013 shutdown by closing down 400 national parks. Congressional Republicans and the White House squabbled for weeks about who was to blame for the parks closing. Ultimately, it was Republicans who were blamed.

And yet… the Republicans won the House during the subsequent midterms. It’s possible that the shutdown will last weeks or months and cost McCarthy his job and be remembered in a year, and beyond, as a colossal G.O.P. shitshow. But if the shutdown wreaks havoc on Biden’s fragile Bidenomics, and he has to jump in to clean up the mess, he will come out of this muddied too, whether he likes it or not.