No, Andrew Sullivan, we don't need DeSantis to save us from Trump. Trump is toast.
The more pressing question is: Who can save us from DeSantis?
On a recent Gillmor Gang, Steve Gillmor recommended Andrew Sullivan’s Substack post in praise of Ron DeSantis. After I dismissed and discounted the Sullivan post as based on false premises, Steve challenged me to elaborate. Here’s my response. Any of you who are not Steve Gillmor are also invited to read along.
In a post entitled The DeSantis Dilemma, Andrew Sullivan presents Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis as the best hope for saving the United States from a second Trump term. Sullivan’s launching point is a presumption that neither Biden nor any other Democrat can possibly win in 2024. The only way to prevent Trump from regaining the White House, he argues, is to put a different Republican on the ballot.
As Sullivan puts it:
If you really believe that Trump remains a unique threat to constitutional democracy in America, you need to consider the possibility that, at this point, a Republican is probably your best bet.
One stands out, and it’s Ron DeSantis, the popular governor of Florida.
SPOILER: By the end of the essay, we learn that Sullivan is looking at DeSantis, not because he believes no Democrat can win, but because he believes no Democrat should win. Sullivan bristles at the Democratic agenda and has a natural affinity for DeSantis as fellow libertarian conservative. But more on that later.
Let me say at the outset that a Republican will never be my “best bet” for president. As president, a Republican—any Republican—will reopen the Federalist Society’s pipeline of ideological, radical right judges onto the federal judiciary. A Republican—any Republican—will put Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare into severe jeopardy, along with abortion access and marriage equality. A Republican—any Republican—will block advancement on gun safety, justice in policing, tax fairness, immigration reform, and environmental protection. But I’ll put that aside for now, to deal with the substance of the Sullivan post—a vigorous attempt at rehabilitating Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the eyes of moderates and independents.
The bulk of Sullivan’s post is devoted to undermining the widely-voiced perception that DeSantis is simply a calmer, brainier and, therefore, more dangerous Trump—a Trump with a longer attention span, better impulse control, and fewer revenge fantasies. In short, a Trump without the meshugas. Sullivan cites Dean Obeidalla, Jonathan Chait, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Michael Tomasky, and Max Boot, all of whom advance variations of the notion that DeSantis is Trump with the rough edges sanded away. The view is so prevalent that even a DeSantis ally has been quoted in the NYTimes calling DeSantis “competent Trumpism.” In contrast to that widespread view, Sullivan paints the governor as simply a benign and rational—though occasionally abrasive—conservative technocrat.
I’ll agree that to see DeSantis as simply a smarter Trump misses a lot. As Sullivan reminds us, DeSantis is decidedly un-Trumplike in many other aspects. The governor has never endorsed—and in some cases has even opposed—Trump’s most egregious policies and musings: child separation at the border, a claim that climate change is nothing more than a Chinese hoax, advocating stealing the oil in Iraq, and torturing captured prisoners.
In his personal life, as well, DeSantis is, as Sullivan says, an anti-Trump.
Like Andrew Sullivan himself, Ron DeSantis is a libertarian-leaning conservative intellectual. But, unlike Sullivan, DeSantis assiduously courts Trump’s base of aggrieved white nationalists—by speaking at conventions like CPAC and Turning Point USA, and by endless appearances on Fox News. Like most Republicans, he has never once answered the question, “Do you think Biden was legitimately elected?” He dodges and deflects every time it comes up. Asked recently about the January 6th Committee, DeSantis also deflected, pivoting to the GOP talking points of gas prices and inflation. "Why aren't they doing hearings about more energy? Why aren't they doing hearings about inflation? Why are they constantly beating this dead horse?" (By the way, Florida leads the nation in people arrested for participation in the invasion o the Capitol)
DeSantis has risen in Republican politics precisely as Trump did—by exacerbating social division. He revels in aggressive and abrasive policies and communication strategies. Are his tactics identical to Trump’s? No. But they are aimed at the same segments of the electorate—aggrieved and fearful whites. DeSantis has adopted the strategy that the GOP first embraced after Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. It’s a strategy that became the engine of Trump’s win in 2016. Here’s how Dexter Filkins describes it in his recent New Yorker profile of DeSantis:
The unstated premise of DeSantis’s approach was that there was little point in trying to attract Democratic or even moderate voters; if he got his loyalists outraged enough, they would come to the polls in sufficient numbers for him to win. Stuart Stevens, an adviser to Mitt Romney’s Presidential campaign in 2012, told me that Republican leaders have made a calculated choice in recent decades. As their reliable cadre of white voters shrank, they realized that they could either try to attract more minorities or try to motivate white citizens who rarely voted by tapping their racial insecurities. When Romney ran, he rejected the latter strategy, Stevens told me. Then came Trump, who embraced it and won. “The G.O.P. has become a white-grievance party,” Stevens said.
Sullivan is fully aware of DeSantis’s reliance on abrasive provocations stoking divisive cultural issues. As he notes:
His spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, is Trumpian in her provocations, reviving the ugly trope that gays are pedophilic “groomers” until proven otherwise. DeSantis wages the power of government in the culture war — and with alacrity. There’s a pugilism to his style that comes off as bullying at times, so he can, quite clearly, be a charm-free prick. He’s been a coward over January 6 and Trump’s Big Lie. And as Tim Miller notes, he hasn’t exactly declared he would not be another Trump in his contempt for constitutional democracy (although such a stance now would effectively sink his bid to replace Trump). He’s said nary a word on abortion; and has ducked real questionsabout guns in the wake of Uvalde. Who knows what his position on Ukraine is?
Nevertheless, Sullivan discounts and dismisses DeSantis’s divisiveness as a matter of style not substance. He focuses instead on DeSantis policies, framing his record as simply one of pragmatic, technocratic conservatism. In doing so, Sullivan is working to define DeSantis in ways that contradict the way DeSantis works to define himself.
I’ve always argued, that the danger of Trump is not simply Trump and his wounded psyche. It’s also—and perhaps more importantly—the coalition he attracted, validated, energized, and unleashed. You can never define a leader in isolation from the people they lead. Trumpism is not just what Trump himself does and says. It’s also the island of misfit toys who came to work for him and it’s the MAGA coalition he assembled—including the “fine people” who carried tiki torches in Charlottesville, the “very special” people who stormed the Capitol to hang Mike Pence, the people who followed his command to “liberate Michigan” by who plotting to kidnap and execute Governor Whitmer, and all the militia members who continue to “stand back and stand by.” What is most disturbing about DeSantis is that he has never done anything to dissociate himself from that coalition of (to borrow Hillary’s word) deplorables. And he never will. Because he needs them.
As Jon Chait writes:
… the right-wing groups Trump brought into the Republican fold or whose creation he inspired are either political assets or simply too important to be culled…. The DeSantis pitch is to wrest the MAGA movement from the grifters who built it and place it in the hands of a trusted professional politician.
In painting DeSantis as simply a technocrat on a policy level, Sullivan is pointing us to the trees and hoping we’ll ignore the forest. But Sullivan’s attempt to frame DeSantis’s policies as moderate, requires significant distortions and omissions. Before I get to that, however, let me dispense with the question Sullivan’s subhead asks about DeSantis:
Is he the only politician who can save us from a second Trump term?
No. He is not.
Trump is damaged goods and he takes on more damage with every installment of the January 6th Committee hearings. Trump, plainly, is not on a path to regain the White House. Despite—or more likely because of—the unwavering devotion of his rabid cult followers and the machinations of his “Team Crazy” sycophants, Trump’s appeal has been so neutered by the January 6th Committee that two Murdoch publications have renounced him. May I repeat that? Two MURDOCH publications have backed away from Donald J. Trump.
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote, “Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.”
The New York Post said, “It’s up to the Justice Department to decide if this is a crime. But as a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again.”
(Not only have Murdoch’s Post and the Journal turned, but the daytime news segments on Fox News are also beginning to show cracks. Brett Baier said the most recent January 6th Committee hearing made Trump “look horrific.”)
The GOP may well choose to nominate DeSantis in 2024, but that won’t be because they share Sullivan’s professed goal of saving America from Trump. If DeSantis does get the nod, it will be because Republicans want to save themselves from another presidential defeat. As Adam Kinzinger said on ABC’s This Week, “Maybe people are shifting more towards a potential for, I don’t know, a Ron DeSantis. Trumpism isn’t dying, even though Trump is becoming irrelevant.” For the GOP, it’s not about saving America. It’s about saving their hides.
Though it’s not yet two week’s old, Sullivan’s claim that we need DeSantis in order to block Trump is not aging well.
Are Democrats Doomed at the Polls?
Let me revisit Sullivan’s pivot point. His urgency in promoting DeSantis is fueled by his assumption that the Democrats are destined to implode. Among the reasons he cites for Democrats unpopularity: wokeness, inflation, immigration, and, “launching a protracted war that may tip us into stagflation.” Please don’t lose sight of that last one. Sullivan casually slipped it in. He nonchalantly takes the Putin line on the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “The U.S. made me do it.”
I’m not convinced that the Democrats are doomed. Despite Biden’s abysmal approval ratings and despite the historical pattern that the party in the White House loses Congressional seats at the midterms, polling shows Democrats with surprising strength. According to Emerson College Polling, Democrats have already closed a nine-point deficit in the generic ballot to only one percentage point.
What’s more, with gas prices falling for 41 straight days, Emerson’s poll also finds that the economy is starting to fade as the most salient voter issue. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe, abortion access looms as a major motivator—and a key campaign issue for Democrats.
Another clear positive sign for Democrats: small-dollar fundraising. According to The Washington Post, the Democratic base is far out-pacing the GOP base in donations of $200 or less. Electoral politics is less about persuasion than it is about motivation. Democrats are clearly motivated.
That said, there are plenty other polls that indicate the Democrats are heading for a wipeout in the midterms. Stay tuned.
Who is Sullivan talking to?
Sullivan frames his post as a choice between DeSantis and Trump, but that choice will never be put to the universe of American voters. That choice will be only available to Republican primary voters, many of whom remain emotionally bonded to Trump. It’s hard to see them preferring a milder, more rational candidate, when it’s Trump’s outrage—or as they put it, his authenticity—that attracted them in the first place. So, it’s doubtful that Sullivan is trying to persuade the GOP. If his arguments about DeSantis are persuasive anywhere, they can only move independents and wavering Democrats—groups who will have zero say in the choice of a GOP candidate.
Sullivan distorts DeSantis’s policies
It’s in discussing DeSantis’s policies that Sullivan works hardest to make the governor acceptable to people outside the MAGA cult. He argues they are more moderate and reasonable than the media portrays—more moderate even than DeSantis portrays. Like Trump, DeSantis is adept at trolling the left to excite his base but Sullivan maintains that his bark is much worse than his bite. As Sullivan puts it:
“DeSantis says or does something that arouses the Trumpian erogenous zones, is assailed by the media/left, and then the details turn out to be underwhelming.”
No, they are not underwhelming. Let’s look at two of them:
Voter Suppression
With regard to Florida’s 2021 restrictive voting law, SB 90, Sullivan quotes Ramesh Ponnuru: “the law leaves Floridians with greater ballot access, in key respects, than a lot of states run by Democrats. Florida has no-excuse absentee voting, unlike Delaware and New York.”
Bringing up Delaware and New York is a dodge. It’s bald whataboutism. Comparing Florida’s 2021 election law to New York and Delaware avoids talking about what changed the delta from Florida’s previous election law—the one in effect in 2020. The clear intent and effect of the new law is to favor the GOP by putting up obstacles to voting in places that tend to vote Democratic— predominantly in Black precincts.
Somehow, Sullivan and Ponnuru neglected to mention that the SB 90 was successfully challenged in court. Chief Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida struck down key provisions of the law in a 288-page ruling upholding the plaintiff’s contention that:
… SB 90 runs roughshod over the right to vote, unnecessarily making voting harder for all eligible Floridians, unduly burdening disabled voters, and intentionally targeting minority voters—all to improve the electoral prospects of the party in power…Having reviewed all the evidence, this Court finds that, for the most part plaintiffs are right. Thus, as detailed below, this court enjoins the defendants from enforcing most of SB 90s challenged provisions.
As with most GOP voting changes, the law was framed as a precaution against ballot fraud. But the judge saw through that: “Not only is voter fraud extremely rare in Florida, but SB 90’s proponents could not even explain how SB 90 would reduce voter fraud prophylactically.” If you care to look deeper into Judge Walker’s ruling on DeSantis’s voter suppression gambit, and the provisions that were disallowed, see this report from Democracy Docket.
UPDATE: The provisions of SB 90 that were struck down by Judge Walker have been temporarily reinstated on appeal—not on their merits, but on grounds that we’re too close to the 2022 midterms. Beyond SB 90, Florida has passed additional voter-intimidation and suppression laws, including the establishment of an “Office of Election Crimes and Security,”the nation’s only stand-alone election police force. In addition, DeSantis has intervened in the state’s redistricting, to personally reject the districts as drawn by the legislature and reduce the number of predominantly Black districts from four to two.
COVID-19 Management
Sullivan endorses DeSantis’s approach to COVID-19 as “steadfast and independent.” DeSantis broke early with the recommendations of the CDC—on vaccine mandates, mask requirements, and closing schools and businesses. His COVID policies have become key bragging points in DeSantis’s speeches. Last week, for example, he told the crowd at Turning Point USA:
If it were not for Florida, the lockdowners would have won. Fauci would have won, Brandon would have won. No Floridian should have to choose between a job they need and a shot they don’t want.
Earlier this year, in his address to CPAC, he said:
From the very beginning, we refused to let this state descend into some type of Faucian dystopia where people’s freedoms are curtailed and their livelihoods are destroyed ... Florida has defeated Faucism. Freedom has prevailed in the sunshine state.
According to Sullivan, DeSantis has been vindicated by the results. He links to a couple of analyses that report
Covid infection and death rates were not much higher than the national average; and compared with California, which instituted a draconian approach, it’s a viral wash.
I’m guessing he meant “virtual” wash not “viral.” While it’s one thing to analyze COVID policies in terms of tradeoffs—balancing health outcomes against economic and educational costs, it takes a heap of clever analysis to call the infection and death rates between Florida and California a wash. Here are the raw unanalyzed numbers:
As of this writing (July 25, 2022), Florida stands seventh highest among the states in COVID cases per 100,000 with 31,270. California is 31st with 26,777. That is to say, Florida has over 17% more cases than California per 100,000. Nearly one in three Florida residents has had COVID
As for COVID deaths, Florida is 17th with 359 dead per 100,000, while California is 39th with 236. In other words, Florida has more than 50% more deaths per 100,000 than California.
For a fuller examination of DeSantis’s response to COVID and the controversies that ensued, see the Dexter Filkins profile in The New Yorker.
When COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer were cleared for young children (6 months to 5 years), Florida was the only state in the US that refused to pre-order any, leading to shortages throughout the state.
Coming clean
At the start of his essay, Sullivan says he’s willing to entertain DeSantis in order to save the country from Trump because no Democrat can win. But by the end, Sullivan comes clean to tell us that he believes no Democrat should win. In a full-on screed against woke culture, he labels the Democrats intolerant and accuses them of an authoritarian, illiberal putsch arguing that, “At some point, we really do have to fight back and defend a liberal society. The Dems are attacking it.”
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