A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
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What the Hell Is Ron DeSantis Thinking? |
By David Corn May 31, 2023 |
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) at a news conference in Miami on May 9, 2023. Rebecca Blackwell/AP |
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| I was wrong about Ron DeSantis. Well, sort of.
In January, I wrote a piece in this newsletter explaining why it would be foolish for the Florida governor to seek the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Because my logic was so compelling, I half-expected DeSantis to forgo the fray until 2028. But as you know, he announced his presidential bid in an unintentionally comic, breathtakingly inept, half-assed, audio-only event on Elon Musk’s wobbly Twitter. (It’s like…radio!) During the glitch-riddled unveiling, DeSantis, with Musk as his wingman (or was it Musk with DeSantis as his wingman?), delivered a message that would appeal mainly to alt-right trolls with in-the-weeds kvetching about Big Tech and wokeness. Throughout, one of his worst features—that nasal, squeaky voice—was highlighted. The performance was botched so thoroughly that I realized the guy may not be sharp enough to have accepted my argument.
I had noted that if DeSantis jumped into the GOP presidential contest, it would be like signing up for a demolition derby. Donald Trump would pummel the Florida governor relentlessly and do everything possible to turn the battle between the two of them into a dirty gutter fight. Trump relishes such warfare and—credit where credit is due!—is good at it. He loves to hurl mud and doesn’t mind getting mucky. He has demonstrated he can survive—even thrive—in a slime-on-slime showdown.
In 2016, none of Trump’s Republican opponents figured out how to best him in such a frenzied and filthy competition. Nor did any of them find a way to counter his pettiness and nastiness, much less rise above it. Neither Ted Cruz nor Marco Rubio, no slaves to civility, came out of that mud-wrestling pit looking good. Is DeSantis a more talented politician than either of them? Trump now has much more baggage—and an indictment!—than he did then, and he has perhaps lost a step or two. Still, there’s no evidence that DeSantis has figured out how to get into a cage fight with a skunk and not emerge stinking.
The likelihood of Trump squashing DeSantis in a Godzilla-versus-Bambi fashion was only half my argument. I also asserted that the alternative scenario—DeSantis vanquishing Trump—could be worse for DeSantis. If DeSantis manages to slay the former president, Trump will not accept the loss this time any more than he did in 2020. He will claim that DeSantis and the RINO establishment rigged the race against him. He will call on his millions of supporters to not support DeSantis (or any other Republican who accepts DeSantis’ victory) and to not send a dime to the GOP. He will dedicate himself to preventing a DeSantis win in the general election against the Democratic standard-bearer, presumably President Joe Biden. (As I’ve noted more than once, Trump is obsessed with revenge.) DeSantis will have to contend with a vicious civil war within his own party, while attempting to boot Biden out of the White House.
The warning signs of what lies ahead for DeSantis already exist. Trump’s camp has accused him of being a groomer, while Trump himself has hinted he’s gay and bashed DeSantis as a destroyer of Social Security. (Get out the popcorn!) And this is before the race heats up. DeSantis had good reason(s) to sit this one out.
Yet when the siren songs from consultants, donors, journalists, and others tell a politician he’s White House material, it’s tough for that person to not heed the call. Presidential fever is highly infectious. Rep. Morris Udall, an Arizona Democrat who ran for president in 1976, quipped, “Once this dreaded disease—whose symptoms include delusions of grandeur and an urge to make repeated visits to Iowa—gets into a man’s bloodstream, it can only be cured by embalming fluid." DeSantis has gotten high on his own delusions—or the supply from his consultants and advisers, who can make a bundle off a DeSantis presidential endeavor.
Clearly, DeSantis was not wise enough to heed my advice. But now, after witnessing his initial campaign moves, I am not surprised. He is running a campaign that defies reason.
For the past year or so, political observers and pundits have touted DeSantis as an attractive choice for Republican voters who want a break from Trump. That is, voters who crave conservative politics delivered by a responsible adult, not a braying, narcissistic, combative, mean-spirited, scandal-ridden demagogue. As the cliché goes, this was DeSantis’ lane. Was it wide enough for him to win? Who knows. But on paper, it was a hypothetical path to the nomination. And as a governor of a key state who earned a massive reelection victory, DeSantis had the best claim on this roadmap.
Yet in the lead-up to his jump into the GOP presidential brawl, DeSantis seemed bent on out-Trumping Trump, rushing from one culture war battlefront to another. In a Trumpian fashion, he has embraced the role of autocrat and harshly confronted numerous targets, including the state’s public education system and Disney, the state’s largest employer. His attacks on critical race theory and classroom discussions of gay issues, as well as his support for book-banning, defines him. He passed a six-week ban on abortion—hardly a move to win back suburban women voters turned off by Trump. Rather than attempt to cruise by Trump in a different lane, he has been trying to pass Trump in Trump’s own lane. His goal seems to be to establish himself as more MAGA than the King of MAGA. (My colleague Pema Levy has written a grand dissection of DeSantis’ authoritarianism.)
This desire to appeal to voters from Trump’s hardcore base—whether the result of genuine conviction or a cynical political gambit—has pushed DeSantis far to the right. He recently said he would consider pardoning the convicted marauders who attacked the US Capitol during the insurrectionist January 6 attack. And he vowed to “to destroy leftism in this country and leave woke ideology on the dust bin of history." Destroy leftism? Does that mean undo Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, child labor laws, the five-day work week, worker safety and environmental rules, Obamacare, financial safety regulations, civil rights laws, and every other policy that has emerged from the left?
Here’s one important context for pondering the politics of DeSantisism. The last two Democratic presidential nominees—Barack Obama and Joe Biden—campaigned as politicians who aspired to unify the country, to find some consensus between left and right. Neither declared they would destroy the opposition. And while Biden, after January 6, did decry MAGA Republicanism as “semi-fascism,” he noted that he believed these extremists—who sought to overturn an election and incited violence—did not represent most of the GOP. (His math may have been off on that.) Yet on the Republican side, it is SOP—or de rigueur—to demonize the political opposition and promise its annihilation. This is tribalism on steroids, and DeSantis has apparently calculated that he can match or surpass Trump on this ugly and dangerous front.
Political pros I’ve talked to about this are mystified by DeSantis’ embrace of extremism. With Trump, as of now, holding a lock on 40 to 50 percent of Republican primary voters, they point out that there isn’t much more room in the Trumpist lane for a non-Trump Trump. Of course, Trump, who was recently found liable for sexual assault and defamation and who is facing many investigations and possible indictments (beyond the one indictment brought by New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the porn-star-hush-money caper), may become too burdened with controversy and sleaze even for GOP voters. (Remember, he can still campaign for president from a prison cell.) Perhaps DeSantis and his crew are banking on this—or a cardiac arrest. In a Trump-free contest, DeSantis would have a claim on Republican voters who yearn for a demagogue who brazenly exploits grievances and resentments.
Yet DeSantis is running as a Trump mini-me. He is not an alternative; he is a substitute. I’m not making any predictions about this race, but, for now, this strategy appears to be his second major miscalculation. His first? Diving into these dirty waters at all.
Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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The Watch, Read, and Listen List
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Moonage Daydream. Moonage Daydream is the sort of documentary about David Bowie that David Bowie would make. That may not be the compliment it seems. Using previously unreleased footage from the personal archive of Bowie, who died of liver cancer at the age of 69 in 2016, Brett Morgen, a notable documentary-maker, has produced an intriguing two-hour-and-twenty-minute account of one of the most imaginative popular music artists of the past 50 years. Yet the film is often frustrating. It may be chronological, but it’s not as linear as the conventional bio-doc. Visual images are inserted that are presumably connected to Bowie’s work—but not really. All of sudden, there’s a shot from F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, the 1922 classic horror film, or Georges Méliès’ 1902 A Trip to the Moon. Yes, the point is to locate Bowie in a historical spectrum of artistic invention, but for me this was a distraction. I craved a more direct telling of Bowie’s life story—and perhaps more explanation of his creative process. Why Ziggy Stardust? Where the hell did that come from?
Bowie, as has often been said, was a chameleon—Ziggy, the glam queen/king, the Thin White Duke, and so on. But no matter what idiom he chose, he always mastered it. Morgen wonderfully shows us that more than a rock star, Bowie was a creator, an artist whose internal impulses propelled him to succeed in a variety of disciplines: acting, painting, and music. Yet how was he able to perform so well in so many ways? This film provides no clear answers. Perhaps it is inexplicable. Defiantly resisting covering certain Bowie hits and milestones, Moonage Daydream offers an impressionistic feel of Bowie more than a straightforward understanding of the whole, complicated, brilliant man.
Morgen casts Bowie as a philosopher. The film opens with a 2002 quote from his subject: “At the turn of the 20th Century, Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed that God was dead, and that man had killed him. This created an arrogance within man that he himself was God. But as God, all he could seem to produce was disaster. That led to a terrifying confusion: For if we could not take the place of God, how could we fill the space we had created within ourselves?” I was not sure how or even if this remark explains Bowie. Is Morgen suggesting his art—his celebrity—was meant to fill this space?
Moonage Daydream, now streaming on HBO (oh, forgive me, it’s now called Max), is guided by Bowie’s Deep Thoughts about time and life. “All is transient,” we hear Bowie intone at one point. “Does it matter? Do I bother?” When did Bowie say that? What was the context? I understand and respect what Morgen was trying to achieve. But he went too far in Bowie-izing Bowie. The never-before-seen footage of Bowie—concerts, interviews, and the like—is captivating. But as a fan who wants to understand what made Bowie such a standout artist, I craved more daylight than daydream.
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I have too many favorite Bowie songs to choose one for this issue. But here is my favorite cover of a favorite Bowie tune: |
“Whole Lotta Love,” Tina Turner. The iconic Tina Turner bade farewell to us last week. She was a crossover artist who contained multitudes—pop, rock, R&B, and disco—and the rare entertainer whose kickass rep was fully backed up by a boatload of talent. (She was a devout practitioner of and advocate for Buddhism.) She also left us with one of the best covers of a Led Zeppelin tune. This 1975 cut, heavily influenced by “Theme From Shaft,” is from her second solo album, Acid Queen, her last project with Ike Tuner before the pair separated. Instead of Rest in Peace, I would say, Rock on, Tina.
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Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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