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The DeSantis gambit

sackett said:
●JoeMorgue! You're starting to scare me! You say DeSnazi has some little charisma?
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It's hard to put into words exactly, he just doesn't give off that "I'm literally a joke and if you have enough neurons to rub together to make a synapse not only will not take me seriously you will not be able to comprehend how any one could" quality that Trump has.

Now to be fair this could work against him. By the same token he doesn't have the "Flaming bag of dog poop to put on the Liberals doorstep, hate me or love me you will not ignore me" quality Trump did.

Trump very much started off as a "Are you listening to me know?" brick thrown through our windows by rural America. DeSantis can't start from that position as easily.
 
to be fair, he doesn't say which sides of civil rights cases he argues.
 
Can the Dems please demonstrate they've learned the lesson about Trump and start the character assassination of DeSantis now? Twitter and Facebook should be full of DeSantis as Hitler memes now. The guy is a Nazi so the attack posts practically write themselves.
 
Some might say Trumpt is DeSnottis Lite, some might say tother way round. I'd call DeSnottoid a sort of streamlined Trumpf. But it's not significant which is what, they both operate on the principal of making hateful sonsofbitches feel good about themselves. Power to the Prix!
 
Craig4 said:
Can the Dems please demonstrate they've learned the lesson about Trump and start the character assassination of DeSantis now? Twitter and Facebook should be full of DeSantis as Hitler memes now. The guy is a Nazi so the attack posts practically write themselves.
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He's playing far to the alt-right to beat out Trump in the primary. That is not an intelligent strategy at all. Maybe he doesn't have Trump's warped brain but I don't see him building up a cult following to any dangerous degree. I don't believe the majority of voters are white Christian nationalists pleased with all the nonsensical book and education banning going on in FL.

Seriously, is that playing well outside of his small circle of friends? People didn't elect Trump because he had policies they liked. They elected him because he spouted the BS they wanted to hear about Mexicans and Muslims and claimed to be a great businessman. That bubble has popped.
 
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DeSantis is probably going to find serious blowback from some of his silly political decisions. Only the raving fascists, cross-eyed christian nationalists (same??), and the gun-waving rightist Cubans actually support him. It appears the rest of Florida either could not be bothered with his nonsense because it doesn't affect them, or actively oppose him. I mean... How many doddery old retirees on their last legs in the sun are going to care if CRT is taught in pre-school or not? The only "woke" they care about is being "woke" for brunch cocktails.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
He's playing far to the alt-right to beat out Trump in the primary. That is not an intelligent strategy at all. Maybe he doesn't have Trump's warped brain but I don't see him building up a cult following to any dangerous degree. I don't believe the majority of voters are white Christian nationalists pleased with all the nonsensical book and education banning going on in FL.

Seriously, is that playing well outside of his small circle of friends? People didn't elect Trump because he had policies they liked. They elected him because he spouted the BS they wanted to hear about Mexicans and Muslims and claimed to be a great businessman. That bubble has popped.
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I agree with most of this, but Desantis' small circle of friends happens to be Florida
 
Norman Alexander said:
DeSantis is probably going to find serious blowback from some of his silly political decisions. Only the raving fascists, cross-eyed christian nationalists (same??), and the gun-waving rightist Cubans actually support him. It appears the rest of Florida either could not be bothered with his nonsense because it doesn't affect them, or actively oppose him. I mean... How many doddery old retirees on their last legs in the sun are going to care if CRT is taught in pre-school or not? The only "woke" they care about is being "woke" for brunch cocktails.
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he won 59.4% of that wang of a state
 
gabeygoat said:
I agree with most of this, but Desantis' small circle of friends happens to be Florida
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Part of FL and part of TX, there are 48 other states.

DeSantis and the lot of them are all competing for Trump's dwindling base. 2020 and 2022 showed us that base is not the voice of America. It's the GOP's fault their party is so screwed up that to get elected to their primary you sabotage your viability in the General.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Part of FL and part of TX, there are 48 other states.

DeSantis and the lot of them are all competing for Trump's dwindling base. 2020 and 2022 showed us that base is not the voice of America. It's the GOP's fault their party is so screwed up that to get elected to their primary you sabotage your viability in the General.
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totally, their base is shrinking from an already small start. but, Florida and Texas are a **** ton of EC votes. turnout is probably more important than candidate:see Georgia.
 
The GOPs problem is that DeSantis is the more boring version of Trump: an insider instead of a wildcard, an operative instead of a renegade.
Trump could rally the anti- establishment Vote in a way DeSantis never will.

The best way to character-assasinate DeSantis is to highlight his connections to the RNC and McConnell.
 
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I don't know if it's been said here, but I think of DeSantis less as Trump 2.0 and more like Santorum 2.0.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
The GOPs problem is that DeSantis is the more boring version of Trump: an insider instead of a wildcard, an operative instead of a renegade.
Trump could rally the anti- establishment Vote in a way DeSantis never will.
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Another problem for Ron DeathSantis...

His far-right credentials are open for anyone to see.

Usually, being a "moderate" gives a candidate an advantage in an election. (The most moderate candidate won't ALWAYS win, and there are exceptions. But it does give a statistical advantage.) And in the 2016 election one of the reasons Trump was able to win was he was actually able to appear more 'moderate' than Clinton. Yes, it may seem surprising in hindsight, but in 2016 Trump had no real political track record, and his promises were vague enough that people could read in almost any position. (He promised "cheap health care for everyone", held up a rainbow flag at a political rally, didn't touch the possibility of eliminating social security, etc.) And Clinton had been successfully portrayed as a "left winger" (or at least someone under their control).

But Meatball Ron has been in power in Florida for more than a term. We've seen "book bannings", attacks on LGBTQ rights, and people carrying swastika flags where he was giving speeches. With that type of background it is going to be hard if not impossible to appeal to moderates in the electorate.
 
Craig4 said:
Can the Dems please demonstrate they've learned the lesson about Trump and start the character assassination of DeSantis now? Twitter and Facebook should be full of DeSantis as Hitler memes now. The guy is a Nazi so the attack posts practically write themselves.
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Doing that only endears him to the far-right and gives centrist enablers an excuse to dismiss Democrats ("pointing out someone is acting like a Nazi is just as bad as acting like a Nazi").

If you really want to stop DeSantis, paint him as a weakling. Play his own ads of him debasing himself for trump. Run that stupid Top Gun ad he made. Show him shout whining at reporters. High light how all of his culture war nonsense burns out as soon as there is any pushback.

The thing about strongman authoritarians is that they are fake tough guys.
 
Norman Alexander said:
I always take US voting results with a beaker of salt. Voluntary voting means not all voters vote. Those that don't are either too old, don't care, or they have been gerrymandered. When only the fascists can vote, they vote for fascists.
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You need to take the voting results of most democracies with a ton of salt, since very few have mandatory voting.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
The GOPs problem is that DeSantis is the more boring version of Trump: an insider instead of a wildcard, an operative instead of a renegade.
Trump could rally the anti- establishment Vote in a way DeSantis never will.

The best way to character-assasinate DeSantis is to highlight his connections to the RNC and McConnell.
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De Santis's new book is an attack on the GOP Establishment, but I suspect it comes off as phony.DeSantis will say or do just about anything to be elected.
 
dudalb said:
I suggest that forcing people who don't care to vote is not a good idea.
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I agree. If someone doesn't care enough to vote on their own, they're not going to care enough to give who and what the put their mark next to much, if any, thought.
 
dudalb said:
You need to take the voting results of most democracies with a ton of salt, since very few have mandatory voting.
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Indeed. But apart from the obvious tin-pot corruption-riddled ****-hole countries, most of them with voluntary voting also don't have political parties actively trying to prevent voters from voting if they do want to, or nullifying the votes of those who do. That's the problem...
 
dudalb said:
I suggest that forcing people who don't care to vote is not a good idea.
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Stacyhs said:
I agree. If someone doesn't care enough to vote on their own, they're not going to care enough to give who and what the put their mark next to much, if any, thought.
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So, for a thought experiment, consider if voting was indeed mandatory in the USA rather than voluntary. What do you think would change?

ETA: I think we have been this route before. Should it be a separate thread topic?
 
DeSantis is willing to risk War with The Mouse.
Hope Disney is looking for ways to actively get someone more sympathetic into power in Florida.
 
Norman Alexander said:
I always take US voting results with a beaker of salt. Voluntary voting means not all voters vote. Those that don't are either too old, don't care, or they have been gerrymandered. When only the fascists can vote, they vote for fascists.
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It's not so much the voluntary voting but that the republicans have enthusiastically adopted Stalin's dictum on voting.
 
gabeygoat said:
he won 59.4% of that wang of a state
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Against Charlie Crist, a Democrat so centrist he was literally a Republican a decade ago. Florida Democrats were betting that if they ran a Republican against a Republican, surely the good people of the state would choose the lesser evil and sanity would prevail. I mean it's Florida, right? It's not like the entire state is known for deliberately and repeatedly making bad decisions.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
He's playing far to the alt-right to beat out Trump in the primary. That is not an intelligent strategy at all. Maybe he doesn't have Trump's warped brain but I don't see him building up a cult following to any dangerous degree. I don't believe the majority of voters are white Christian nationalists pleased with all the nonsensical book and education banning going on in FL.

Seriously, is that playing well outside of his small circle of friends? People didn't elect Trump because he had policies they liked. They elected him because he spouted the BS they wanted to hear about Mexicans and Muslims and claimed to be a great businessman. That bubble has popped.
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I think DeSantis is smarter than Trump and that's what worries me. He'll make nice with mainstream Republicans while getting the base all hot and bothered.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Indeed. But apart from the obvious tin-pot corruption-riddled ****-hole countries, most of them with voluntary voting also don't have political parties actively trying to prevent voters from voting if they do want to, or nullifying the votes of those who do. That's the problem...
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OK then have automatic voter registration when you reach the legal age, but don't force people to go to the polls.
 
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Craig4 said:
I think DeSantis is smarter than Trump and that's what worries me. He'll make nice with mainstream Republicans while getting the base all hot and bothered.
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I think DeSantis has no principals but DeSantis, he is like Trump is that respect.
But where is smarter is he knows better then to double down on failure. I predict, if he feels it would make me more acceprable to mainstream voters, he will begin to tone down or backpeddle on the Anti Gay stuff.
But what worries me is his thrist for power.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Against Charlie Crist, a Democrat so centrist he was literally a Republican a decade ago. Florida Democrats were betting that if they ran a Republican against a Republican, surely the good people of the state would choose the lesser evil and sanity would prevail. I mean it's Florida, right? It's not like the entire state is known for deliberately and repeatedly making bad decisions.
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You someone way to the left would have done better in FLorida?
 
dudalb said:
You someone way to the left would have done better in FLorida?
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Maybe not necessarily "way to the left", but at least someone who wasn't a republican to begin with.

I do think moderates in general have a slight advantage in a general election, but actually being a member of the opposing party messes up the optics.

Sent from my moto e using Tapatalk
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Against Charlie Crist, a Democrat so centrist he was literally a Republican a decade ago. Florida Democrats were betting that if they ran a Republican against a Republican, surely the good people of the state would choose the lesser evil and sanity would prevail. I mean it's Florida, right? It's not like the entire state is known for deliberately and repeatedly making bad decisions.
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This is something the Democrats do constantly. Instead of someone who has some fire and doesn't apologize for being a democrat, they run a diet Republican who spends as much time trashing other Democrats as they do opposing Republicans. And it fails. Every. Damn Time.

Andrew Gillum, for all his problems that came up afterward, ran a brilliant campaign. He lost by a rounding error and almost dragged Bill Nelson's comatose ass to victory with him. that's without the full backing of the state party and with a bunch of voter suppression. And Gillum wasn't even all that progressive. The dude just didn't shy away from calling out DeSantis' BS.

Had the state party properly backed Gillum or convinced Nelson to let a younger, more energetic Democrat run for his seat, US politics may look very different today.
 
dudalb said:
You someone way to the left would have done better in FLorida?
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I think Crist should be seen as a poster boy for centrist politics, seeing as he can't even make up his own mind whose side he's on, and his failure speaks for itself.

It's a fine strategy in theory, I get it: so long as you're ever-so-slightly left of whatever Klan rally the GOP is raiding for candidates these days you should be able to grab all the left votes, all the center votes, and a fair number of non-deplorable right votes too. Against a fascist thug like DeSantis it should have been a landslide, if it worked that way. But it don't. Enough Democrats are never going to vote for a Republican, even one pretending to be a Democrat, even when the alternative is DeSantis, and enough Republicans are never going to vote for a Democrat, even one secretly Republican, even when the alternative is DeSantis, that the numbers falter. Hell I'd put money on there being more voters turned off just by Crist's cowardly fecklessness than turned on by DeSantis's arrogant authoritarianism. Running nearly-Republicans against actual-Republicans is a failing strategy no matter how many times it fails and the best you can think of is "oh so you think you could have done better?!"

What exactly that means for the party in terms of where its ideological preferences for candidates should be, I don't think we have enough data to say. Obviously I'd argue it'd be better for America in the long run if it was pushed as far left as possible to try and rebuild the social safety nets the GOP seems so eager to tear down, but all we have here is evidence that where we are right now is NOT where we need to be.
 
dudalb said:
I suggest that forcing people who don't care to vote is not a good idea.
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The liberals around here haven't adjusted to the fact that largely due to Trump, the roles have reversed and right now in the US, the low-information voters tend to be Republicans. To be honest, I'm having a tough time adjusting to it myself.
 
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