No Second Best Trump
On paper, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis seemed to be a serious contender to Donald Trump earlier this year.
He did not back down from conflicts with the left; rather, he initiated them.
“I will be able to destroy leftism in this country and consign woke ideology to history,” DeSantis said.
He has snubbed blue-state governors by sending them planeloads of immigrants. He has fired Democratic prosecutors who were elected locally. From drag performances to critical race theory, he stamps out everything he considers to be an excess on the left.
He is not only a backer of the far right cause; he has made it his personal weapon. Unlike conventional conservatives who are leery of the misuse of state power, DeSantis likes using his position to impose his interpretation of what is and is not moral.
However, since declaring his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on May 15, DeSantis’ support has dropped from 31.3 percent on Jan. 20 to 20.7 percent on May 15, the day DeSantis announced, to 14.9 percent on Aug. 21, according to RealClearPolitics.
As DeSantis prepares for the first Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, the fundamental topic he must address is why his support has dwindled and if he can resurrect his campaign.
There are several responses to the first question, most of which include a grain of truth or more. DeSantis has shown to be a stiff on the stump, a guy without charisma. His efforts to outflank Trump from the right — “We’re going to have all these deep state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on day one” — seem more strategically calculated than founded on conviction. DeSantis outperforms Trump in terms of executive competence, attention to detail, and devotion to an agenda, but he has yet to capitalize on these assets.
That much is clear, but is DeSantis saddled with a greater liability? I asked a group of political operators and political scientists the following question:
Ron DeSantis’ challenge against Trump has been conspicuously ineffective. Why? Is it because DeSantis lacks or is unable to exhibit Trump’s emotional hostility?
Trump has a knack for inserting language more appropriate for a Queens street corner, whether in lengthy, meandering speeches covering a variety of topics, some contentious, some not, or in having supposedly terrible words leaked from private meetings.
As a consequence, Trump’s fans learn that he is ready to refer to “shithole countries” in Africa and Latin America, and to declare of immigration, “They’re bringing drugs.” They’re bringing crime with them. They’re rapists,” or to characterize Latino gang members: “These aren’t humans, these are animals, and we’re removing them out of the nation at a level and pace never seen before.”
The responses to my inquiry were instructive.
“Trump’s speech style adeptly channels the talk traditions of blue-collar men who pride themselves on not having to suck up and self-edit to get ahead, which is how they see professionals’ traditions of decorum,” wrote Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California Law School-San Francisco, in an email.
Not only that, but “Trump is way ahead of DeSantis in his perceived ability to get things done as a strong leader — that’s Trump cashing in on his enactment of blue-collar traditions of tough, straight-talking manliness,” Williams noted. Also, Trump is entertaining, while DeSantis is a bore.”
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According to Williams, “DeSantis, like many Democrats, believes that politics is primarily about policy differences,” whereas in reality it is more frequently about “identity and self-affirmation.” Non-college graduates are 73 percentage points less likely than graduates to think they are treated with decency, something Trump knows intuitively.
DeSantis’ campaigning strategy was described by Williams as “a clumsy color-by-numbers culture-wars formula” accompanied by a speaking style “more Harvard than hard hat, as when he talked about ‘biomedical security restrictions’ in his speech to the Republican Party convention in North Carolina (whatever those are??).”
Williams warned against labeling all Trump supporters as racist:
In 2016, 20% of Trump backers were truly “grief voters,” who identified strongly with being white and Christian while harboring hostility against people of color and immigration. However, 19 percent identified as “anti-elites” with economic progressive views and moderate views on race, immigration, the environment, and homosexual marriage. Writing out all Trump supporters as bigots is one of the many ways the left, sadly, aids the right.
Williams cited a paper published earlier this year titled “Measuring the Contribution of Voting Blocs to Election Outcomes” by Justin Grimmer, William Marble, and Cole Tanigawa-Lau, which “showed that, while racial resentment strongly predicts Trump voting, that’s not why he won: He won because he also attracted a much larger group of voters with only moderate levels of racial resentment.”
“Another alternative is that Trump tends to be all reaction and hot rhetoric, but weak or inconsistent on policy,” Linda Skitka, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois-Chicago, stated via email. As a result, people might project their preferred policy preferences onto him and assume he represents them via ‘gist.’”
Skitka believes that
DeSantis, on the other hand, is extremely clear and consistent about policy, and he is considered too radical by many on the right. To top it off, he looks to be terrible at retail politics — he isn’t personable, and definitely not charismatic. Even if he starts adopting Trump-like language, I don’t believe DeSantis can compete to overcome these difficulties.
David Bateman, a political scientist at Cornell, made a particularly damning comparison of DeSantis to Trump: “Trump is able to speak the language of hate and resentment in a way that everyone believes is real, and not just a calculated act.”
Everything concerning DeSantis,
in comparison, seems deliberate. He’s the Yale and Harvard man who now rails against academics and elites. He’s talking about wokism and critical racial theory, which no one understands (even Trump stated that no one can define woke, even though he rants against it). When he attempts to be as visceral as Trump, he comes out as strange. DeSantis’s statement about “slitting throats” reminded me of Romney’s “severely conservative.” While DeSantis’s is a hazardous amplification of violent imagery, they both seem strange and unnatural.
Bateman wrote on a more basic level:
It’s unclear if most Republican voters (rather than funders) desire a mainstreamed and party-credentialed Trump. The fact that Trump was a genuine outsider in Republican politics was a key component of his appeal. Donors and party activists reasoned that Trump’s ability to be connected with social and racial conservatives while still presenting himself as unattached to Republican orthodoxy made him a more appealing candidate in a national election.
Insofar as DeSantis is perceived as “an establishment Trump, who I expect most voters will see as fully aligned with G.O.P. orthodoxy but even more focused on the priorities of racial and social conservatives (taking over universities, banning books, or attacking transpeople),” he “becomes more like a general election loser,” according to Bateman.
David O. Sears, a psychology professor at U.C.L.A., responded in an email that he “was inspired by your inquiry to do a free association test” on himself to see what he associated with Trump and DeSantis.
The outcome for Trump was:
Trash-talking, insulting people, entertaining, male, white, older, angry, impolite on purpose, Roller Derby, raucous, uninhibited, tell it like it is., high school locker room, dirty socks thrown in a corner, telling his locker room buddies that he threw his mom the finger for the millionth time when she told him to clean up his room (but of course didn’t dare).
Regarding DeSantis:
Wimbledon, ladies’ tea party, PBS/NPR, civics lesson, lecture, Ivy League, costly suit perfectly ironed and lying in the closet. “Yes, Mom.”
DeSantis’ bid to unseat Trump as the party’s top dog confronts a number of personal and institutional obstacles.
Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, stated in an email that DeSantis had taken a risky approach to the nomination fight:
DeSantis’ goal, and the strategy of any candidate other than Trump, should be to unite the Maybe Trump supporters. But, with his aggressive language (“slitting throats”), comment that Ukraine was just a “territorial dispute,” suggestion that vaccine conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. would be a good candidate to head the Centers for Disease Control, and doubling down on whether slavery was beneficial to some enslaved people, DeSantis appeared to be going after the Always Trump voters.
The difficulty with this strategy, according to Ayres, is that “the Always Trump voters are ‘Always Trump’ for a reason — they are not going to settle for second-best Trump if they can get the real thing.”
Democratic pollster Geoff Garin wrote:
There is no way for DeSantis or anybody else to outflank Trump on the right, where he has the most devoted supporters. Candidates may argue that Trump is not conservative enough on certain topics, but that is beside the point for Trump supporters. Candidates may attempt to replicate Trump’s harshness, but that misses the point of what drives these supporters to Trump.
What other candidates, in Garin’s opinion, cannot emulate
is Trump’s demeanor and fashion sense. Nobody else has his performing abilities (particularly DeSantis), and no one else communicates the same bravery, naturalness, and sincerity in addressing MAGA supporters’ frustrations. Trump makes hate fun for his fans. DeSantis, on the other hand, is a tedious drag in his meanness.
Frances Lee, a Princeton political scientist, emphasizes the inherent difficulties that a Republican running against Trump would face: “It is extremely difficult to unseat an incumbent party leader in a primary,” Lee stated by email. “Trump’s approval among Republicans remains high enough that any alternative candidate would have a difficult time making a case against him.”
As if it wasn’t intimidating enough, Lee said,
DeSantis’ challenges are exacerbated by the fact that nearly one-third of Republicans who oppose Trump oppose him for a variety of reasons. Some Republicans would prefer to see a more moderate option, similar to the Republican Party before to Trump. Other Republicans support the improvements Trump has brought to the party but reject him for personal reasons (such as his actions on Jan. 6, his crass and abrasive attitude, or questions about his electability). It will be incredibly difficult for any alternative to get the support of all Republicans who want an alternative to Trump. Even if a candidate is successful, he or she will not have a majority among Republicans until Trump’s popularity dips more.
Columbia political scientist Robert Y. Shapiro commented on the challenges confronting DeSantis’ effort to place himself to Trump’s right. “The DeSantis strategy is weak in that there are not enough Republican voters to be gained to the right of Trump,” Shapiro noted in an email. Trump’s “Queens street-rhetoric style may help, but the point is that Trump sounds real and not staged for political purposes, in contrast to DeSantis’s endless use of ‘woke,’ which is very vague and has more meaning in liberal-left and educated elite circles and does not have the clear meaning that Trump’s position taking has.” In explaining this, DeSantis comes out as theatrical and forced.”
Shapiro’s Columbia political science department colleague Robert Erikson commented via email:
DeSantis looks to be the next potential contender to fall short of convincing their party’s supporters that they should be president. Many seasoned politicians who were otherwise effective in their jobs are on the list. The line for the Republican Party extends from George Romney (1968) through Rudy Giuliani (2008) to Jeb Bush and Scott Walker (2016). Ed Muskie (1972) and John Glenn (1984) are two Democratic instances. All saw their supposedly strong positions crumble early, with several dropping out before Iowa or New Hampshire.
“Will DeSantis be able to overcome this obstacle?””Erikson inquired in his email. “Underdogs frequently surprise and win nominations by energizing a sizable bloc of primary and caucus voters.” Jimmy Carter was one such case. Obama and Trump are on the more recent list.”
So far, DeSantis is not following in the footsteps of previous revolutionaries.
According to Martin Carnoy, a professor at Stanford’s graduate school of education, Trump has effectively carved himself a unique niche in the Republican cosmos, leaving no space for a rival like DeSantis.
“DeSantis’s main problem,” Carnoy noted in an email.
is that he is not Trump, yet Trump is nonetheless there, occupying much of the space that Trump has established and continues to define. This is the ‘victim’ area, where the ‘victims’ are the ‘forgotten core Americans,’ beset by liberals who want to aid everyone but them — migrants, blacks, LGBTQIA people, the homeless, and foreign nations fighting for democracy.
Carnoy argued that “large segments of the U.S. population have not been swept up in the economic growth of the past 40 years, which has largely enriched the top 1% of income earners.” He blamed Ronald Reagan, but also Democrats, for “leaving this political space to the very Republicans who created it.”
While Democrats failed to compete in this space, Carnoy argued that “Trump figured out in 2015 that he could continue to help the rich (including himself) economically through traditional tax reduction policies — stoking inequality — and simultaneously enthuse the forgotten by throwing rich red ‘victim identity’ meat to this bloc of white (and Hispanic) working class voters.”
According to Dianne Pinderhughes, a political scientist at Notre Dame, one photograph of DeSantis at a campaign event reflected the fragility of his campaign for the nomination.
“He has no affect,” wrote Pinderhughes. “My favorite illustration is a photograph of him.” He’s surrounded by campaign supporters, yet every face in the shot is flat, unexcited, and unsmiling (including the candidate).”
According to Pinderhughes, DeSantis’ interests are “similar to Trump’s, but his persona does not allow or facilitate his emotional engagement with his public, who also want to align with him, but there is no arousal there.” He’s not emotionally raw in the sense that Trump’s wild trail speeches elicit support from the general population.”
The 2024 Republican nomination race is unique in that the frontrunner is a once-successful, once-failed candidate attempting to represent his party for the third time.
In an email, University of Pennsylvania political scientist Daniel Hopkins noted that “the Republican presidential primary is not a typical open-seat race, because Donald Trump occupies an unusual position as a quasi-incumbent.” He has exceptional name recognition and familiarity, having served as President for eight years and dominated news.”
According to Hopkins’ analysis of the race, “DeSantis needs to do more than simply take positions that are popular with Republican voters — he needs to give G.O.P. primary voters a reason to leave behind Trump, a figure who remains popular among the party’s activists and voters.”
Hopkins argued that convincing Republican primary supporters to forsake Trump would be tough, citing “a nationwide survey I conducted earlier this summer.” On critical topics ranging from immigration to health care and climate change, I found that the distinctions between all Republicans, Trump supporters, and DeSantis backers were often rather little. On issues alone, it’s difficult to see DeSantis persuading GOP supporters to desert Trump.”
Hopkins argued that DeSantis’ greatest chance “may be to follow Biden’s lead from 2020 and convince primary voters that he’s the most likely to win a general election.”
One of the things I asked the folks I interviewed for this piece was “whether the willingness to give undiluted expressions of views on race and immigration has become the equivalent of a threshold issue on the right” — a need for anybody seeking the Republican nomination?
Vincent Hutchings, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, took a skeptical stance on the question:
The premise of the inquiry indicates that this is a new phenomena, which I disagree with. For at least the past 150 years, race and immigration have been major party concerns. Trump did not invent these concerns in the Republican Party; rather, he has exploited them more successfully than his colleagues.
Trump, according to Hutchings, is more than a match for DeSantis:
Trump, unlike DeSantis, may be able to interact more successfully with the typical Republican voter. Furthermore, whatever else one may think of the former president, as a former television personality, he is more telegenic than the average politician. Finally, Trump’s role as the principal target of liberals and progressives makes him even more enticing to many Republicans. In sum, if the left despises him (Trump), he must be doing something right in the eyes of these folks. DeSantis just cannot compete with Trump on these numerous levels.
DeSantis’ position was eloquently summarized by Jacob Grumbach, a political scientist at Berkeley. “The Republican primary electorate is not especially interested in candidates’ policy positions,” Grumbach noted in an email, referencing a 2018 research titled “Does Party Trump Ideology?” Michael Barber and Jeremy C. Pope’s “Disentangling Party and Ideology in America.”
As a result, Grumbach noted, “it’s unlikely that a different policy platform would have put DeSantis in the lead at this point.” Republican voters, on the other hand, perceive Trump as more successful in battling liberals and Democrats.”
Finally, Grumbach said, “You don’t need research to tell you that Trump has charisma, wit, and humor (though it’s not always clear that it’s intentional) that DeSantis does not.”
Although not everyone believes Trump has charm, wit, and comedy, many of his fans remain enthralled. They want to keep the spectacle going.
