Team DeSantis needs to come to grips with the fact that their approach only appealed to a minority of their own party.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has officially suspended his presidential campaign, giving American voters front-row seats to one of the most spectacular collapses in political history. Many will say that this outcome was inevitable, that there was no way to defeat former President Trump; per this line of thinking, Trump’s many indictments animated the Republican base and sucked all of the oxygen out of the room from his competitors. While there is some truth to that, it’s not the full story. The failure of the DeSantis campaign is rooted in a disastrous launch, an inability to course correct on any issue, and a determination to continue talking about things that the voters didn’t care about.
Number one on the list was an incessant desire to re-litigate Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While there are many people who disagree with the Trump White House’s approach to the pandemic, the concerns weren’t strong enough to move enough voters to make a difference. The simple truth is that most voters have moved on.
Furthermore, many Republican voters were willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt when dealing with a once in a 100-year event, while others actually agreed with his approach. In a party whose most active voters tend to be older, attacking Trump for being too cautious on COVID-19 never seemed like the best decision.
Doubling down on being « anti-woke » also backfired. Governor DeSantis was embarrassed after being outmaneuvered in his battle with Disney. He also signed a six-week abortion ban supported by many of the pro-life activists that made up the DeSantis base. Yet such a move was wildly unpopular with the general public, and gave Trump the opportunity to attack him for it, allowing the man who appointed the judges that overturned Roe v. Wade to position himself as a relative moderate on abortion.
