There are moments when politicians just go pffft. Ron DeSantis may have had one last week when his campaign shared this homophobic anti-Trump video. It is vile. I never thought it possible for anyone to make Donald Trump a sympathetic character, but DeSantis has done it: Trump is seen citing and reiterating his 2016 support for gay rights. Then an incoherent tumult of angry anti-DeSantis images ensues. Huh? Oh, I get it: DeSantis is a hero because he’s been attacked for his opposition to gay rights. But, but…I still don’t quite get it. It’s prohibitively smirky, insidery—the product of a hateful sensibility. I agree with Mike Tomasky that it is appalling, but I’m not sure it’s an accurate reflection of the current state of the Republican Party. Indeed, some sort of limit may have been reached here, even for the culture warriors of the right. This smacks of utter desperation. The DeSantis campaign slouches toward sewage.
DeSantis has moved himself from crude but plausible criticism of teaching gender fluidity to pre-pubescents in Florida schools to outright anti-gay bigotry. There are plenty of Republican grandparents who don’t want their grandchildren being taught fluidity; but those same grandparents may well have beloved children who are gay, perhaps even gay and married. You’ve gotta wonder which dreg-sliver of extremists DeSantis is aiming to influence. I would be surprised if it were a voting majority of Republicans.
At the very least, DeSantis has made a massive miscalculation of Trump’s appeal, which was always more attitudinal than ideological. It was always more about Trump’s mouth than his beliefs, a giant screw-you to the forces of propriety…and he was clever about it. Trump used working-class frustrations with crime, immigration and wokery to his advantage, but he balanced that with support for Social Security, Medicare and the mainstream American acceptance of gay rights—plus the false promise of blue-collar economic Valhalla, a gilded escalator in every split-level.
A plausible theory of the DeSantis case was that a sane, competent version of Trump could wrest the nomination. Hence, the initial big money support for the governor, given his Ivy-clotted resume and successful record in Florida. But the panicked candidate’s own theory of the case seems to have tilted toward filth: that Republican voters want an even more extreme version of Orange Crush. I see little evidence of that. Perhaps, given his greasy slide down the early polls, the opposite.
There are other problems for DeSantis. It is rather ironic that the anti-Disney crusader comes across as a rather Disneyish animatronic character on the stump. He is not a comfortable politician—and the appearance of ease and authenticity is an absolute necessity in latter-day politics. That is not a problem easily fixed (just ask Hillary Clinton). And there is one other: Trump is probably a one-off. He could get away with being a cad—it was his calling card—but most successful presidential candidates need to show a certain greatness of spirit and this recent video exposes the exact opposite in DeSantis. He has shown himself to be puny of spirit, a troll. Almost anything is possible in American politics, but I would be very surprised if DeSantis is able to overcome that.
This may unravel the Republican field in unexpected ways. And given Trump’s possible collapse under the weight of prosecution, obscene cholesterol levels and old age, that field may turn out to be wide open.
Bad Headline Day
One of the reasons why Trump has been so successful is this near-congenital default among the establishment media: even good news about race relations is portrayed as bad news. Hence, this headline from the Washington Post: BLACK WOMEN ARE FINDING BETTER JOBS THAN EVER. A RECESSION COULD REVERSE THAT.
I mean, you think? As opposed to the effects a recession would have on white women? Or Latinas? This is leftoid guilt-bias at its most insidious. You are not allowed to say that things are getting better for black people, lest you ignore the over-story: that racism is structural and immutable and can never be overcome. Which is absolutely true…but only if you disregard the evidence of the past 60 years. The Washington Post is a great newspaper. It should get, well, woke to the fact of progress.
And More Goods News, Ignored
Another thing to be avoided in the liberal media is anything positive about charter schools. And so, we must wade deep into the libertarian trout stream of the Wall Street Journal editorial page to find this news:
Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (Credo) report is the third in a series (2009, 2013, 2023) tracking charter-school outcomes over 15 years. The study is one of the largest ever conducted, covering over two million charter students in 29 states, New York City and Washington, D.C., and a control group in traditional public schools. [Italics mine.]
Credo’s judgment is unequivocal: Most charter schools “produce superior student gains despite enrolling a more challenging student population.” In reading and math, “charter schools provide their students with stronger learning when compared to the traditional public schools.” The nationwide gains for charter students were six days in math and 16 days in reading. [Italics mine.]
The comparisons in some states are more remarkable. In New York, charter students were 75 days ahead in reading and 73 days in math compared with traditional public-school peers.
And yet, most Democratic politicians—with the exceptional exception of Barack Obama—will have nothing to do with charters. Hillary Clinton, a total education wonk, wouldn’t even visit the inspiring schools in the Harlem Children’s Zone. Joe Biden has set his Department of Education the disgraceful task of hobbling charters wherever possible. Why, you might well ask? Why would Democrats, of all people, stand against educational achievement for poor kids? Opposition from the teachers unions, of course. What we have here is another reason—along with chronic empathy for criminals as opposed to insistence on the incarceration of violent offenders—why Democrats are losing altitude with Sanity-based black and brown residents in the cities.
DeSantis is Trump without Trump’s charisma, if that makes sense. In essence, he’s just a mean spirited person. It’s nice to see him get his comeuppance.