The DeSantis Campaign Postmortem

What could have been and now will not

Hold it. How can you have a postmortem before the first vote is cast? Well, it’s quite simple. The DeSantis campaign is dead. It’s not going anywhere. As Gavin Newsom said during their debate, neither he nor DeSantis are going to be their party’s nominee in 2024. So true.

To think DeSantis just wasted what should have been an awesome opportunity, particularly for 2028, and in so doing, likely ended his political career completely.

Tone deafness is just one thing that got in his way. There are others, but you have a classic example of someone being convinced that what they want, in this case the presidency, is all theirs, just waiting for them to walk on stage and be handed everything they desire.

“You’re the man, you’re the great governor of Florida,” these sycophants probably told him. “You’ve shown how to really govern. Trump, he has all these problems. He’s going to get indicted, and everyone will abandon him. You’re going to just walk in there and everyone’s going to fall at your feet. MAGA and the presidency will be yours for the taking.”

Back in ancient Rome, victorious generals would have parades with their troops, captured prisoners and booty. During the parade, a slave would whisper to the general, “You are mortal”. In other words, “Don’t believe the hype about you”. Unfortunately for Ron, it seems he believed the hype, and it is truly amazing how he has continuously declined in popularity since his announcement.

One of the accounts I follow on X posted this a number of months ago, and it’s quite illustrative. Here is the RealClearPolitics average through August of 2023. I circled a very precipitous decline back in April. If you go back and look at what happened at that point, there was the famous flip-flop that Ron made regarding the Ukraine war. He originally came out and said, basically, that it should be stopped, that we shouldn’t put you any more money into it and he was sounding a very populist tone.

Then his donors got a hold of him. The next thing we hear is Ron equivocating saying, essentially, ‘Well, you know, maybe we need to do some more for Ukraine and Russia is really terrible and we really need to go against Russia and we need to bleed Russia dry.’ Blah, blah, blah. He flip-flopped and he got back on the pro-war side. Suddenly, people just felt like they could not trust the guy.

Where was this strong, resolute governor of Florida who was going to get things done, stand up to the deep state and never back down? He wasn’t there. This is where the DeSantis slide started. From that point in April until now, it has just been one misstep after another.

It’s really amazing because he really could have done so much better. If Ron had run his campaign, like Vivek Ramaswamy has run his, then I believe Ron would be in a very strong second position to Trump and would probably win the Iowa caucus making life very difficult for the former president.

What Ramaswamy has done is he came out against the war in Ukraine and has not wavered. Ramaswamy came out against the deep state in a way DeSantis never has with strong calls for firing gobs of bureaucrats. When Trump was indicted for the first time in Miami, Vivek went down to Florida, to DeSantis’ home state, and he personally protested the indictment against Trump and encouraged all the other Republican presidential candidates to do the same. All of this built credibility within MAGA for Ramaswamy.

Additionally, Ramaswamy has been respectful of Trump and Trump’s supporters. He’s been running his campaign as ‘Trump was good. I want to take what he’s done and make it better’. DeSantis, and his campaign, constantly impugn Trump and his supporters. Indeed, Ron tries not to give any credit to Trump for what he did that was good during his presidency.

If DeSantis had said something like, ‘Trump was great. I really liked what Trump did, but his time has passed and I’m the future’ he’d be sitting pretty right now. But he didn’t do that. It was and is dumb. The DeSantis slide will be looked at in years to come as exactly what not to do in a campaign.

I’m so glad that DeSantis did that now, because if he had played his cards right, endorsed Trump in 2024 and continued doing his job as Governor in Florida, he would be the de facto nominee for 2028. He and his handlers could have crafted the near-perfect package, and he would have been given the proverbial keys to the city in four years. But he didn’t do that. He had to go for it all right now and he showed his true character. Hubris, pure hubris.

He has ruined his political career and it’s going to make governing in Florida these next two years very tough. He’s a wounded animal and the legislature in Florida is not going to roll over like they have in the past. They realize that DeSantis is not the force to be reckoned with that he used to be. It’s not going to be pretty at all.

So, there you have it. What could have been, except for hubris. DeSantis either didn’t hear that whispering voice saying “you are mortal” or he ignored it.

Glad we found out now.

It’s Trump or bust, baby — Trump or bust.