DeSantis has not yet shown that he can appeal to working-class voters as Trump has.
Florida Gov. Ron Desantis has finally announced his candidacy for the White House—on Elon Musk’s Twitter, much to the consternation of the establishment media. After a number of glitches and false starts and stops, DeSantis spent most of the conversation, held with author and entrepreneur David Sacks, lashing out against censorship on digital platforms and highlighting his “anti-woke” bonafides. He also touted his performance during the COVID-19 pandemic; DeSantis was among the first governors to lift lockdown orders.
During the conversation, DeSantis’ primary focus seemed to be his efforts against the “woke,” a major sticking point in the ongoing culture war between conservatives and progressives. He referenced his ongoing feud with Disney, which began when the company criticized DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education Act that prohibits instruction on gender identity and sexuality for students under eight years old. He also talked about how he wanted to ensure kids are “not going to be roadkill in some type of woke Olympics where they didn’t fit some category, and so they’re denied opportunity.” The theme came up again and again in a myriad ways—and not just on Twitter.
Again, wokeness took center stage. Even when Gowdy asked DeSantis how he would handle the situation in Ukraine, the governor immediately responded by saying he would address wokeness in the military and eliminate “gender ideology” within its ranks because “people don’t want to join a woke military.” He eventually said he did not want American troops involved in the conflict between with Russia, but said nothing about whether the United States should be sending billions of dollars to Ukraine—a topic of major concern to many voters, especially Republican voters.
