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I doubt the narrative that Desantis will be significantly more effective than trump, because we have a foretaste of who trump will appoint this time around and, say, Ken Paxton is likely to be at least as effective as Desantis when given a blank check. I really don’t expect trump to do much actual governing, I expect him to occasionally hold photo ops, nominate judges the GOP tells him to and give a far-right cabinet a blank check.
I think it was Hannania, who I think been crushing it lately, who said if a person takes a job in the Trump administration it’s the last job he will ever get while Desantis gives them the normal post administration options.
Perhaps this isn’t true but it feels correct to me. But I don’t think his cabinet with a check will have much power. They will be C people facing lawfare from everywhere. Putting out fires is all they will accomplish.
I think that that’s simply not true, and that trumps failure in the last admin is more attributable to resistance from govt employees.
This will likely be less of a factor in term two, because 1) trump can be expected to make it easier to fire the worst offenders and 2) he can be expected to appoint hardline rightwing loyalists.
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Either Blues are too stupid to level the same firepower against a more effective Desantis, or Desantis wouldn't actually be as effective, or they would level the same firepower against a more effective Desantis. The first option seems quite unlikely, and the latter two give no advantage to Desantis.
Well Trump has at most 4 years. DeSantis has up to 8 potential years. That’s markedly different in a feud.
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I think this grants too much agency to Blues as a group.
The level of firepower is almost never calculated. It’s intuited. Powerful blues do get to steer this process, as with news outlets trying to make a villain, but they’re responding to short-term incentives and easy narratives more than an overarching strategy. DeSantis will take less flak than Trump as long as he inspires less of a disgust reaction.
It is not obvious to me that Blue disgust with Trump was greater because of Trump's specific quirks, relative to his vocal commitment to Red values and the growing extremism within Blue Tribe itself. I am worried that Desantis, if he is an effective champion, will provoke an equivalent disgust reaction from Blues. Nor do I see how any of this bears on agency of Blues as a group; I am not claiming the apparent disgust was astroturfed or otherwise manufactured.
Don't be. (speaking form a blue tribe bubble and a leftist position here)
Trump is uniquely bad to the libs among us because he is a norm violator and has the affect and language of a low IQ prole type AND is also a tacky tasteless fat rich guy; a fucking unforgivable combo. Ron on the other hand is your standard political reptilian. Boring, in other words. Too bad for him, he is really on the horns here.
His problem is he needs to assume some of that trumpian glory and make himself exciting; which will also make people excited to vote against him. Him going full speed ahead on his culture war arc has the libs and the left taking notice; too many photos of empty library shelves and pallets full of books being removed, too much rhetorical light surrounding the don't say gay bill (eg; "its only grades 1-3/5/12/colleges also now) ; regardless of the how fake the whole thing is.
It's all great ammunition, and trump still being around is keeping the spirit alive in the base. I've been at socal wine tastings where the toast was "To trump and bidden: please don't die before 2025".
Basically, in order to inhabit Trump as a spirit totem, he needs to become more trumplike and piss off all the boring lib centrists out there.
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This is my concern as well and I don't think it's unfounded. Every republican president has been literal hitler, and the volume of shrill panic has continuously spiraled upwards.
My blue friends have made no differentiation between Desantis and Trump (despite, in my mind, there being a massive difference in their approaches and palatability). I do think Destantis offers the people who work with him far more stability and long-term progress than his competitor, to @netstack 's point, and I think anyone who is reasonable as a moderate would be more likely to vote for Destantis than Trump.
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No, part of being "more effective" includes, for example, drafting EOs with language that is less-susceptible to challenge than Trump's were, and avoiding explicit public statements which provide grist for the lawfare mill. Or being more familiar with the administrative process, and handling the promulgation of new regulations with the proper procedures. Or being more familiar with the wide variety of administrative and procedural tools that can be brought to bear against, e.g., rogue prosecutors, as DeSantis has been doing with Florida state's attorneys. Or being more dedicated to governing in an anti-progressive manner than in getting good press coverage (See, e.g., Trump firing Sessions, hiring Wray, appointing a special counsel re: Russia hoax, etc.)
I'm not arguing that Desantis can't be more effective than Trump. I'm arguing that there is no practical level of effectiveness that can prevent the FBI from ratfucking a president they don't like.
I agree that FBI opposition can harm an administration they don't like. However, I don't think that a more competent and audacious administration would have been nearly as harmed as Trump was by Russiagate. The FBI is nominally under executive branch control, and the President has the pardon power - an administration that doesn't concede to opposition pressure has ways of pushing back against rogue enforcement.
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I think a middle ground exists where Trump is actually repulsive and undignified. Liz Cheney types would still around and the broad middle wouldn’t play ball with blue shenanigans.
More repulsive than the Trans movement? More repulsive than the BLM riots and Antifa murders? If their judgement is that poor, why are they useful?
Those weren’t issues back in 2016-2020 as much. And after 2020 he had the election denial stuff.
Trump did things in 2016 like being mean to immigrants instead of just not wanting them.
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Because Trump was the president. He defacto represents the R's, just like Bidden represents the D's.
Him being gross means that the R's are also gross through the transitive property, because he is king shit of R mountain.
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