Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his campaign of division, smugness, and white entitlement are failing in every way imaginable.
The New York Times has a story on the DeSantis campaign that reads like a pre-autopsy:
One recent move that drew intense blowback, including from Republicans, was the campaign’s sharing of a bizarre video on Twitter that attacked Mr. Trump as too friendly to L.G.B.T.Q. people and showed Mr. DeSantis with lasers coming out of his eyes. The video drew a range of denunciations, with some calling it homophobic and others homoerotic before it was deleted.
But it turns out to be more of a self-inflicted wound than was previously known: A DeSantis campaign aide had originally produced the video internally, passing it off to an outside supporter to post it first and making it appear as if it was generated independently, according to a person with knowledge of the incident.
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Records show the DeSantis campaign made an $87,000 reservation at the Stein Eriksen Lodge in Utah for a retreat where donors were invited to cocktails on the deck on Saturday followed by an “investor appreciation dinner.” It’s the type of luxury location that helps explain how a candidate who has long preferred to fly by private jets burned through nearly 40 percent of every dollar he raised in his first six weeks without airing a single television ad.
Ron DeSantis: A Campaign Of Complete Failure
DeSantis is also assuming that Trump will implode under the weight of potentially hundreds of felony indictments, so he will become the nominee by default. Gov. DeSantis has shown himself to be out of step with the rest of the country as he has no message about any of the issues that matter to voters and instead spends his time chanting woke like it is some sort of mantra that will help his polling numbers and recently defending slavery.
The DeSantis campaign shows the classic hallmarks of a dying political enterprise. The campaign is burning through money on costs like luxury travel. It is struggling to raise funds from small donors. The operation is big, bloated, and unfocused, and the candidate is dull, uninteresting, and fails to connect with people on a human level.
If the DeSantis campaign wants to understand why they are losing to Trump so severely, the last point above is their answer. Trump supporters feel emotionally bonded to him. Ron DeSantis is robotic, cold, and distantand doesn’t relish the human interaction that is the backbone of presidential primary politics.
Voters don’t feel emotionally drawn to DeSantis, which makes him the laundry detergent of American campaign politics. Everyone needs laundry detergent, and they have to pick one, but nobody has ever had a passionate, emotional discussion over why they buy Arm & Hammer over Tide.
Watching DeSantis fail so badly on a national level must provide an endless source of amusement for those who have watched or are living with his mini-dictator act in Florida, but the truth is that Ron DeSantis is another in a long line of governors who have eyes for the Oval Office but fail when given a seat at the grown-ups table.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
