How not to run a campaign against Donald Trump
By: You-Yan Wang
For Ron DeSantis, the campaign trail started with a botched and glitchy interview led by Elon Musk, promising to “lead our great American comeback,” and ended with a distant second-place finish in a state where he visited all 99 counties. DeSantis’ presidential campaign has been a disaster, and even that’s an understatement. Marred by personnel firings and a change of campaign managers, DeSantis’ campaign floundered, goaded by the persistent bullying of the Republican heavyweight Donald Trump. Once touted as the future of the Republican Party, his only option now is to pick up the remnants of his political career. Ron DeSantis’ staggering fall from grace shows the power of radical and controversial rhetoric in the dynamics of the Republican Party.
Trump has built an insurmountable lead on his charm and entertainment value, easy for a man with decades of experience in the national spotlight as a celebrity. DeSantis, on the other hand, is anything but that. He’s an awkward candidate, evidenced by him refusing to even crack a human smile during the Republican primary debates, and countless open-jawed fake laughs while campaigning in Iowa. He’s also made odd statements, such as “[I was] geographically raised in Tampa Bay,” but “culturally my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in Western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio.” Considering that DeSantis has lived in neither Pennsylvania nor Ohio, it comes across to voters as obvious pandering in a desperate effort to garner support. To the Trump-adjacent wing of the Republican Party, people skills and charisma matter. Why swap out the unabashedly brash but personable Trump for the aloof and distant DeSantis?
Even if retail politics was not DeSantis’ focus, with policy being his selling point, that’s where he truly lost the race. His popularity in Florida and his initial campaign were built around a “war on woke,” which put all his eggs into one very fragile basket. “Woke,” a word that even its users struggle to define, is generally used as a disparaging term against social justice movements. For Governor DeSantis, the war against woke ideology became a personal vendetta. After the enactment of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits education on gender and sexual orientation for young children, Disney and the DeSantis administration began a feud that has included lawsuits and the media conglomerate abandoning a $1 billion investment in the state. It might’ve ignited the Trump-adjacent crowd to see a candidate wage open war with Disney, but the flame quickly petered out. Wokeness isn’t something that you center a campaign around; it is an esoteric issue that not enough of the Republican voter base cares deeply about. This strategy was a major flaw going into DeSantis’ campaign, and it’s one that he never escaped.
Armed with his faulty “war on woke,” DeSantis aimed to run to the right of Trump in an effort to woo away some of the MAGA legion. However, his campaign failed to recognize what the former president’s supporters value: an inflammatory leader. The “Real” Donald J. Trump—who slings playground insults around like they’re candy— is exactly that. Within the Trump adjacent wing, Trump managed to turn them against DeSantis with humiliating nicknames like “Ron DeSanctimonious” and even “Meatball Ron.” It has become personal, with Trump making completely unfounded claims that the Florida governor wore high heels, might be gay, and was potentially a pedophile. A primary race devolved into a smear campaign, simple as that. But it’s an effective campaign; in the age of social media, the outrage and the memorability of each statement that a candidate makes matters. Trump knows this to be true, hence why his catchy nicknames in former campaigns like “Sleepy Joe” or “Crooked Hillary,” have garnered so much success in the past. These slogans have even overshadowed Trump’s rhetoric on his policies and visions for the country. And for the flailing and emasculated DeSantis, his decision to alienate the moderate sect of the Republican party ultimately backfired. In the eyes of Trump supporters, there was no way that they were going to replace Trump with the fraction of a candidate that their leader made DeSantis out to be. Pressured by the humiliation, the sinking funds, and barely scraping a victory over Nikki Haley in Iowa, Ron DeSantis suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. After a year of constant degradation at the hands of the ultimate bully and refusing to fight back, DeSantis decided to snivel back into the good graces of the Trump-adjacent sect, hoping to retool for 2028. As controversial Freedom Caucus Congressman Matt Gaetz put it, “Welcome home Ron, welcome back to the Maga [sic] movement where you’ve always belonged.” As the 2024 presidential election looms over the heads of millions of Americans, one can only hope that the future of our country will be put into good hands.
