If you’ve been trying to take Ron DeSantis down, you’re doing it wrong
Donald Trump has spent years showing us exactly how to destroy Republican candidates. You portray them as weak inept punchlines, so right wing voters (who prefer “strongmen”) will lose interest in them. If there’s one thing we should learn Trump, it’s how we can take down people like Ron DeSantis.
There’s no reason for us to use Trump’s obnoxious, slur filled approach. But take that out of it, and he’s given us the blueprint. It’s so obvious when you think about it. Successfully portray a wannabe strongman as a weak joke, and right wingers will lose interest in that candidate.
The method that most liberals prefer, which is to earnestly “sound the alarm” about how powerfully dangerous this or that Republican candidate is, never works. That just tells people on the right (and in the center) to vote Republican – because they like a strongman, no matter how corrupt, as long as they’re actually, you know, strong.
Trump took out the entire 2016 Republican field just by turning them into weakling punchlines one by one until they were all gone. He’s not even that good at it, it’s just that easy. Wannabe strongmen are always insecure weirdos to begin with. You just call them out on it.
Joe Biden even managed to turn this tactic around on Trump. Biden ultimately won the 2020 election with five words during a debate: “Will you shut up man?” In so doing, Biden made fun of Trump for being a weak insecure babbler who was afraid to stop talking for fear someone else might say something smarter.
Don’t make the mistake of presuming that everyone thinks like you do. Liberals hate authoritarianism for good reason, but moderates and conservatives don’t care about it, and you can’t make them care about it. Moderates hate ineptness. Conservatives hate the perception of weakness. Use that to influence them. Successfully portray DeSantis as a weak weirdo loser in their eyes, and he’ll be finished, just as surely as all those Republican candidates in 2016 were finished off by the perception that they were weak weirdo losers.
In a way we’re lucky that it’s taken this long to finally indict Trump, because it’s given him false hope that he’ll get to be a 2024 player, which means he’s already out there turning the other 2024 Republican candidates into weak punchlines in the eyes of right wing voters.
But Trump is being indicted now, in multiple jurisdictions. Handcuffs. Bail hearings. “Yes your honor.” And that’ll start to make him into a weak punchline in the eyes of right wing voters. So we won’t get to keep relying on him to punch holes in the 2024 Republican field.
With Trump falling off the table, it’ll be up to you to portray people like DeSantis as weak punchlines. Will just earnestly “sound the alarm” about how dangerously powerful DeSantis is, in a way that lets you feel righteous but hands him more votes? Or will you be willing to do what works?
