It's a Small Field, After All

 (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

It all started on Twitter Spaces on May 24th. That was the day Ron DeSantis kicked off his presidential campaign. But perhaps "kicked" is the wring word. It was more like a shank off the side of the foot that wound up in the stands of the Twitter wilderness where every person can be a comedian for a day.

    It was meant to launch not only DeSantis' presidential campaign but also Elon Musk's Twitter Spaces, which is nothing more or less than the worst conference call system ever invented. Predictably, the system crashed, leaving Musk and DeSantis to silently wonder how technology failed them this time. It became known as the Shot Not Heard 'Round the World. At the time, Mehdi Hasan jeered, "Bravo! Remember, their pitch is 'Trump but competent.' Lol."

    Less than ejght months later, to the surprise of exactly no one, DeSantis stopped gasping and crawling on the desert floor, the condors flew off the dead tree and the inevitable happened. It was the latest in a rapid series of Republican defections that started with Tim Scott, then Chris Christie, continued with Ramaswamy, then Asa Hutchinson then, finally, DeSantis. Now it's essentially just Trump and Haley.

     Therefore, it was perfectly fitting that a professional fuckup like Ron DeSantis would bow out of the race on, fittingly, Inauguration Day, with a fake quote misattributed to Winston Churchill: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” It took a tiny Twitter account, Incerta Veritas, to turn up the origin of the quote: A 1930s Budweiser ad.

     Former GOP congressman David Jolly said it was perhaps the most catastrophic implosion in US presidential history and it's easy to see why. He tore through a war chest of $150,000,000 in less than eight months and had nothing to show for it but a distant place finish in the Iowa Caucus. He had Rupert Murdoch's endorsement and even put him on the cover of one of his papers calling him "the future."

     He won reelection in Florida by 19 points (albeit against tepid and weak Democrat Charlie Crist). The zeitgeist crowned DeSantis as a rising star in Republican politics. Then a funny thing happened on the way to the White House:

     DeSantis left Florida.

 

The Mouse That Roared

The guy who was once lauded as "Trump without the baggage" had, as it turned out, more baggage than all of Florida's airports combined. There were its horrible COVID-19 statistics from the pandemic. There was his losing war with Disney that started over the company's mild criticism of his Don't Say Gay Bill. Then there was that. There was his schoolbook bannings that were getting so ridiculous and heavy-handed that even DeSantis began inching away from it.

     A 15 year-old boy, Quinn Mitchell, faced him at a rally and DeSantis' only response was to subsequently throw him out of a parade. And once he left the Sunshine state, it became screamingly obvious that DeSantis possessed all the charm, personality and people skills of a mildewed enchilada. He came off as less personable than a malfunctioning Chuck E. Cheese animatronic robot. He treated all but right wing press like they were his mortal enemy.

    Then there was Trump, who'd begun raining blows on him from above months before DeSantis threw his white cowgirl boots in the ring. It was like watching a boxer lead with his chin and doing little counterpunching against a street brawler. At no time during his eight months on the campaign trail did DeSantis seriously go after Trump. That turned off a lot of voters who saw DeSantis go after a cartoon mouse but did little more than shadowbox Trump.

     And then there was his obsession with "woke" culture. New Hampshire, a state in which DeSantis would've gotten crushed by 40 points at minimum, decided by last summer they didn't want to be like Florida. By the time DeSantis dropped out over the weekend, he was trailing Trump in Nevada by 65 points. Obviously, no one wants to be Florida except Florida.

     Since DeSantis is going to be termed out in three years, it appears as if, for now anyway, his political career is running on fumes. He can run for his old Congressional seat but even that would be problematic, at best. His best shot, it seems, is running against Rick Scott, his gubernatorial predecessor, for his Senate seat (The two men reportedly hate each other with a passion).

     And, the thinking goes, if he gets Scott's seat, then he'll be able to run in 2028 from the platform of a political office. But the problem with that is DeSantis, like all sociopaths, never change except if they get worse (Look at Trump). Political watchers, big money donors and the internet have long memories and, even without Trump in the mix four years from now, people will remember DeSantis' Hindenburg of a 2024 campaign.