Yesterday Was Meatball Ron Day-- Is That All There Is?

Yes, that's all there is! Photo by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, America welcomed Meatball Ron into a strictly self-indulgent race to try to stop Trump from getting the GOP nomination, largely by being worse than Trump. It doesn’t have as much to do with left or right— or I’d call it attacking Trump from the right— as it does with right and wrong. And there is virtually nothing about Meatball that isn’t wrong. Politico welcomed him to the race by pointing out that the rest of America has always opposed the very idea of anyone with a melted Floridian brain from becoming president. “No Florida politician has ever been elected president. A half-dozen have run in the last 50 years— essentially the period in which the state evolved from political backwater to electoral powerhouse— but all have ended up in the same place, dead in the water long before the nominating convention… The curse of Florida Man— and to date, every Florida presidential candidate has been male— lingers.”

The launch itself was badly botched-- as one might expect from something-- anything-- engineered by Elon Musk. As Politico put it this morning, "You only get one chance to make a first impression. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ was a glitch... But within seconds, it was clear that Tallahassee had a problem. The feed broke, connections got cut off, the hosts seemed confused. It was inauspicious. It also was a black mark on the candidate’s supposed trademarks — expert organization and a comfort with the vanguard of modern media." National Review editor Philip Klein: "[I]t has only served to reinforce why most presidential candidates go with the predictable, tried, and tested route. In short, it was a disaster. The launch of a campaign is one of the few moments in which a candidate has full control of the medium and message, and broad attention. By agreeing to do the Twitter Spaces launch, DeSantis surrendered control and suffered for it. First, there were the embarrassing technical issues, which caused the audio to cut off several times before things finally kicked off more than 20 minutes after they were supposed to. When the first talking space was shut down, over 600,000 people were listening. But the audience peaked just above 300,000 when it came back... He doesn’t have much margin for error — and his first action as a candidate was a huge mistake."

Data for Progress welcomed him by releasing new polling showing that all of his marquee policy accomplishments are largely unpopular with national voters. For example, only 39% of voters, including just 29% of Independents, support making abortions illegal after six weeks of pregnancy. Furthermore, only 25% of voters support allowing individuals to carry guns without a permit or training, including just 21% of Independents, and 38% of Republicans. Their polling also shows that most voters disapprove of his mis-education agenda. A majority— including 67% of Democrats and 56% of Independents, oppose mandating K-12 libraries immediately review and remove all books that are flagged as inappropriate. And his interference in college curricula— from eliminating inclusion of college diversity programs to banning college majors and minors in both critical race theory and gender studies— is also panned by most Americans.

Trump is eviscerating him on the many of his agenda items as well— including abortion— while Democrats watch carefully. But speaking of polls, CNN released one yesterday too— showing Trump with more support than all the other Republicans combined. He’s the first choice of 53% of Republicans and Republican-leaners in the primary. (Republicans who most GOP voters say they will not even consider include Chris Christy, Chris Sununu and Asa Hutchinson— the 3 most outspokenly anti-Trump candidates.)

Trump’s substantial advantage in first-choice support over DeSantis marks a shift from CNN’s March polling, which found the two men roughly neck-and-neck. That movement in Trump’s favor mirrors the findings of other recent national polling on the race.

Trump now leads DeSantis by similar margins among both older and younger voters, an apparent shift from March, when his backing was substantially weaker among those older than 45 than it was among younger Republican-aligned voters. The former president’s primary support now falls short of a majority among some relatively small blocs of Republican and Republican-leaning voters– among them, those who say President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory was legitimate (27% of whom support him), White college graduates (38%), self-described moderates or liberals (45%), and independents who lean toward the GOP (43%). But voters in those groups have yet to unite more strongly around any alternative either, with DeSantis below the 30% mark with each group and other candidates still further behind.

DeSantis’ best showing comes among self-proclaimed “very conservative” voters, 34% of whom support him, compared with 23% of those who describe themselves as “somewhat conservative.”

Jonathan Chait at least acknowledged that Meatball Ron isn’t dumb, like Trump, pitching himself, thus far, to GOP primary voters “as a more competent and ruthless vehicle for their agenda. He had courted and won over far-right activists who had thrilled to Trump: J-6ers, anti-vaxxers, Putin fans. His message would combine complete refusal to disavow any extremist within his coalition— when a small pack of white supremacists harassed Jewish people in Orlando, DeSantis’s spokesman called it a false flag— with a total refusal to acknowledge the mainstream media. He was already amassing overwhelming support from the party’s donor class and media barons, and could count on overt support from the Murdoch media empire… But the de facto rollout of DeSantis’s campaign, in advance of the de jure announcement, has undeniably failed. DeSantis’s polling numbers, after rising smartly, went the wrong way. Crucially, the phalanx of party-elite support he was amassing has begun to crumble. Trump has won several endorsements from Republicans in Congress, and numerous presidential candidates have jumped into the race. DeSantis’s early weakness has produced responses that have made him even weaker.”

The problem goes beyond DeSantis cutting such “an uninspiring figure on the stump, with his irritating nasal speaking voice and aversion to human contact. But mediocre orators (Harry Truman) and introverts (Richard Nixon) have won presidential elections before. And just last November, these drawbacks did not stop DeSantis from crushing an opponent who was neither unqualified nor ideologically extreme. The main obstacle he’s facing lies outside his control: Republicans simply love Trump.”

There may be a theoretical potential majority coalition composed of Republicans who either dislike Trump or realize he actually lost or believe he is fixated on the past.

But assembling that coalition was always going to be difficult. The Republican Establishment spent four years defending Trump at every turn. And it spent decades training Republican voters to reflexively dismiss any news source not controlled by the party itself. The party-controlled news has turned around and tried to interest those same voters in nominating DeSantis, but Fox News can’t immediately counteract four years of hagiographic Trump coverage by simply flipping a switch to DeSantis, the way Soviet propaganda organs might simply erase a deposed leader and introduce a new one. Even for state media, changing hearts takes time.

Yet another theory posits that DeSantis is trapped by his inability to directly challenge Trump. Specifically, DeSantis refuses to say Trump actually lost the 2020 election, undercutting his implicit case that Trump is a loser. And more generally, he has avoided direct confrontation even as Trump gleefully carves him up.

…A more serious obstacle is that DeSantis himself appears to have grown increasingly obsessed with elite political discourse. He is fixated on concepts and communicates in acronyms and other jargon favored by ideologues working professionally in the conservative movement. His decision to announce his candidacy on Twitter, an unpopular social media accessed by a small percentage of the public, confirms the impression.

But this is best understood less as a tactical error by DeSantis than as evidence of the depth of his commitment. One fallacy I identified in my story last year is the assumption by moderates and liberals that, because DeSantis is undeniably intelligent, he can’t actually believe what he says.

What I believed a year ago, and believe even more strongly now, is that DeSantis genuinely subscribes to right-wing theories casting a skeptical eye on American democracy. His 2011 book is an extended argument that, by enabling elected majorities to redistribute resources from the rich to the poor and middle class through taxes and spending, democracy poses a threat to liberty and the “real” Constitution.

…[T]he fundamental bet DeSantis has made is that the breadth of his party, from its McConnell wing to its space-laser wing, is receptive to the idea of a strongman who isn’t so dumb. No one else has stepped forward to supply that candidacy.

The Lincoln Project hates him as much as they hate Trump. The conservative Republicans who run that place sent him an open letter. "[Y]ou’re going to get. absolutely destroyed. Your awkwardness, disdain for people, and general disgust with the process, won’t help while you’re shaking countless hands in distant diners or standing in the middle of a fair posing for pictures with a butter cow. You think you are owed a win, but you’ve never been attacked like Trump will wreck you. Your height, your recent and sudden weight loss, your terrible political judgment, the bad advice from domineering advisors, will all be fair game to Trump. He’s going to go through you like fingers through pudding. You’re too weak and afraid of Trump and his MAGA cult members to fight him to win. It was a brilliant move to announce on Twitter so you don’t have to talk to real people or answer real questions. It’s just you and Elon Musk – a South African who believes that the radical right deserves their own space to scream racist tropes, promote political violence, and push a bizarre culture war. It won’t re-energize your already failing campaign with its fleeing donors and falling poll numbers, but it was worth a shot! We’ve been following your career for a while now, and we think we know you pretty well. We’re comfortable calling you an unAmerican poseur who wraps himself in the flag and military imagery to hide the fact that he’s nothing more than a wannabe despot who governs as a bully. Patriots don’t ban textbooks, destroy individual rights, and attack companies that don’t agree with his policies. But there’s no reason this can’t be fun! We’re sure going to love watching you crash and burn."

Better news for Meatball on his first official day in the race? Yes, the NY Times had some: $200 million (including $80 million illegally transferred from his non-federal funds). His Never Back Down SuperPAC has a program for grassroots engagement to beat Trump. “Hiring is underway in 18 states and officials said plans were in the works to assemble various pro-DeSantis coalitions, such as for voters who are veterans or those focused on issues like abortion, guns or agriculture.”

Jonathan Last of the Bulwark seemed unimpressed: “Trump’s position in this primary is the most dominant of any non-incumbent president since the advent of the modern system. His polling lead is enormous. His advantages in party structure and elite support are large. As a pure matter of political horseflesh, he is a better candidate than Ron DeSantis. Culturally he is more in step with the party’s base. Finally, there is no issue set with which DeSantis can distinguish himself from Trump. Combine this with the facts that (1) Trump’s support with Republican voters seems incredibly durable, at this point extending back seven years and through more scandals than anyone can count; and (2) it does not seem as though the base will countenance attacks on Trump. Put it all together and while it’s possible DeSantis could win, it’s also possible that this race will not be very competitive.”