The Stakes on Monday Night for Ron DeSantis

We haven’t seen a lot of polling out of Iowa, but what we’ve seen basically shows some version of this:

Or this:

A result anywhere along these lines would be catastrophic for DeSantis, even if he gets past Haley and finishes in a distant second. I wrote in Politico today about Iowa and what a lackluster result could mean for his campaign:

Where is it going to get better for him? Where else is he going to get the endorsement of the sitting governor (Kim Reynolds) and a heretofore king-making social conservative leader (Bob Vander Plaats)? Where else will he have the time to camp out almost full time and the organizational wherewithal to replicate his Iowa ground game?

The nomination process is path-dependent — past outcomes affect future outcomes. If DeSantis gets zero momentum out of Iowa, he’s not going to do any better than the roughly 6 percent he currently has in New Hampshire, which would be good for fourth or fifth place. And that would be no help going into crucial South Carolina, where he sits at a distant third with about 11 percent.

So, yeah, this could be his Waterloo, and we aren’t talking about the small city about two hours northeast of Des Moines.