Ron backed down: analyzing the humiliation
We were ready for this day to come
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Ron DeSantis pulled the plug on his campaign for president on Sunday, a long-overdue mercy kill that denies us the great pleasure of seeing the Florida governor get walloped in New Hampshire. He’s truly an asshole, even at his lowest moment.
Giddiness at today’s news isn’t a symptom of any fondness for Donald Trump, who continues to be a uniquely malignant and corrosive force in American society. DeSantis, however, isn’t all that much better, and in terms of pure policy, far worse of a potential president than Trump. His demise, especially given his pitiful place in the GOP primary polling, must be celebrated, savored, and analyzed, for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, DeSantis is a callous, insecure asshole who has spent the past five years endangering and immiserating the poorest and otherwise most vulnerable people in Florida. Between his bigoted and anti-democratic policies, embrace of Nazis, overwhelming corruption, attacks on unions, and sabotage of the state’s health infrastructure, his performance as governor more than earned him his comeuppance. National humiliation is only a small slice of the punishment that DeSantis deserves, but it’s more justice than victims often receive.
Beyond karmic justice, DeSantis’s gigantic bellyflop should chasten the political press that was so quick to anoint him as the Next Big Thing in the Republican Party. DeSantis’s obvious ambition to one day be president framed the coverage of his pernicious use of power in Florida, the details and victims of which were secondary to how the laws he signed and executive orders he issued might play with donors and Republican base voters.
Horse race coverage ignores governance and instead centers winning elections as the fundamental purpose of our democratic system, turning decisions that impact the lives of millions of people into amoral moves in a chess match.
When DeSantis’s relentless attacks on queer children, pregnant women, and Black voters, and immigrant workers were described as appeals to the GOP’s far-right, it lent them the legitimacy of rational choices. There’s no reason why potential electoral motivations should change the moral assessment of someone who cuts kids off from needed health care or allows people to carry unlicensed concealed weapons, but focusing in on how that person is doing in the polls is a way of maintaining false objectivity.
It was that unwarranted air of invincibility, along with the damage he caused to so many, that inspired some of the coverage and stunts that I produced independently with friends and at More Perfect Union.
One early example happened in the fall of 2022, when DeSantis, clearly on track to roll Democratic retread Charlie Crist in the gubernatorial election, shifted his focus to the GOP presidential primary. The media was happy to indulge him, and many panicked Democrats were treating him like a new Darth Vader. He largely existed at the time as a series of highly produced soundbites, but having listened to him speak in rare one-on-one interactions, we knew his weaknesses.
Chasing momentum, DeSantis released an ad called “Top Guv” that placed him in the cockpit of a fighter jet. The attempt to make him look like Tom Cruise and airbrush a military career spent authorizing torture hinted at the depths of his fragile ego and his team’s poor grasp of mainstream American culture. The ad made DeSantis look like a loser and jerk, and we wanted to begin seeding that idea before his inevitable gubernatorial re-election victory elevated his profile.
The billboard, placed just blocks from the Governor’s mansion, went viral on Twitter, and plenty of locals took photos of it and posted them online. It helped us to establish the sense that maybe DeSantis wasn’t so cool after all, a perception he gave a little bit of juice days later with those ridiculous white boots he wore while surveying hurricane damage.
We hounded DeSantis again and again, framing him not as a powerful leader and family man but instead a weirdo lying politician with a destructive record. There were more billboards, mobile billboards outside of fundraisers, and plane banners, all designed to attack the weaknesses behind what he tried to portray as strengths.
We knew from the start was that DeSantis was too weird and off-putting of a guy to handle the national spotlight without the revealing to the world his strange mannerisms, disdain for regular people, and inability to improvise. By this fall, the public was beginning to catch on, and his weird smile, micro-seizures, scowl, and unintelligible, sanctimonious speeches would become regular fodder for memes and late night jokes.
Ron tried to soldier through, but as we anticipated, he has such a sour personality that he just could not connect with voters — yelling at their kids doesn’t help — nor was he able to sell or defend his record of immense cruelty and corruption. That was another issue we made sure to highlight, understanding that the truth is far more damaging to cranks, buffoons, and creeps.
The point isn’t simply to run through some of our greatest hits or reemphasize DeSantis’s many weak points. He’s gone, at least for now, and now Trump looms on the horizon, ready to unleash every dirty trick in the book.
With his campaign slow to materialize and poll numbers growing more troublesome, I’m increasingly skeptical of Joe Biden’s chances of reelection. His best chance is to go full-populist while allowing his campaign to go big against Trump, though not exactly in the way that most Democrats have approached him over the past few years. Calling him orange or yelling “democracy” isn’t going to cut it.
The lessons taken from DeSantis’s downfall also apply to the former president. His supposed strengths, from his net worth to his supposed independence, should be challenged relentlessly; while his rambling speeches and more frequent spells of confusion must be treated as clear evidence of cognitive decline (largely because it’s probably true).
Trump derives much of his strength from making people feel good about themselves, even if they don’t have his money, power, or many homes. It is a parasocial relationship, and the best way to thin out Trump’s supporters isn’t to panic about his power and treat him like the god-emperor who could destroy the government, but to make people feel silly for following such a disappointing loser.
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A pretty good take on things.
Great piece!