Ron DeSantis only ever had one trick up his sleeve, and it’s stopped working for him
Years ago an NFL football team hired a head coach who lacked the qualifications or savvy necessary for the job. After his first several games proved that he was in over his head, he resorted to using a trick formation that left other teams confused, and it was enough for him to notch a winning first season. But by the next season, the other teams had prepared for that trick formation, and it became so ineffective, it actually began hurting the team. Yet the head coach still kept using it over and over, because he had no clue what else to do.
This brings us to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He was just a back bencher Congressman in one of those red districts where the Republican wins by default, and his career wasn’t going anywhere. But then he latched onto Donald Trump, and next thing you know, he was running for Governor. It ended up being one of the rare instances where a Trump endorsement actually helped a candidate defeat a tough primary challenger. Then DeSantis ran a terribly clueless general election campaign, often disappearing for days amid scandal. But the media ran with Trump’s phony claim that the Democratic nominee was under FBI criminal investigation, and DeSantis ended up winning by just 0.4 points. Rarely has anyone ever won a Governor’s race while doing so little to actually win.
Yet once Trump was ousted from office at the start of 2021, and the media couldn’t hit its ratings marks anymore, it resorted to painting Ron DeSantis as some kind of secret evil genius who was inevitably going to take over the country and defeat us all. The media painted DeSantis’ 2022 reelection bid as a lock, and even went so far as to suggest he was the 2024 frontrunner for President.
None of this held any water factually, of course. DeSantis’ numbers, even in Florida, were never impressive. He was barely elected there to begin with. His habit of arrogantly creating scandals for himself meant that eventually the media was going to get tired of portraying him as inevitable, and instead decide to start getting ratings by playing up his scandals. And of course DeSantis has always been completely in over his head, seemingly confused as to how he even ended up in office to begin with, and certainly having no clue about how to stay there.
Now that things have gotten particularly ugly for DeSantis, with multiple polls saying he’s losing his 2022 reelection bid, he’s doing what unqualified clueless people always do when a single trick has gotten them this far: he’s doubling down on it. DeSantis’ only trick is pandering to Trump’s base. That’s clearly hurting him when it comes to his highly unpopular mishandling of the COVID Delta variant. But like the incompetent football coach who kept using the same trick formation long after it had stopped working for him, DeSantis keeps pandering to Trump’s base even though it’s clearly hurting his career prospects.
Ron DeSantis isn’t going to suddenly become politically savvy. He isn’t going to figure out that he needs to stop pandering to Trump’s base and instead try to expand his support. He’s locked into what has predictably turned out to be a losing strategy (after all, it’s the same losing strategy that cost Trump reelection). The only question is whether you’re willing to put in the work required to defeat him in Florida in 2022.
