After declining to take audience questions after his first New Hampshire campaign event today, Ron DeSantis lashed out at a reporter for asking him about it while he was chatting with members of the crowd individually.
Here’s the video, via @NBCNews —> pic.twitter.com/Z2WtLy0JNj
— Jonathan Allen (@jonallendc) June 1, 2023
My understanding is Ron read a book on how to be normal published in the 1950s.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 1, 2023
There is a certain kind of Republican who is rooting for Ron DeSantis with the same kind of manic energy one roots for a 5* freshman running back because Ron DeSantis getting the nomination would be proof that they still understood what was going on in the world
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) June 1, 2023
But at least DeSaster has a high-quality staff to support him…
Ron DeSantis campaign leaker was invited to donor meeting by staffer he met on a dating app https://t.co/g6aUusHRpO
— Raw Story (@RawStory) May 31, 2023
Oh my god. Jeff Roe had him wearing a Glenn Youngkin fleece vest!! It’s like his signature move now.
“Jeff…he has no personality. Sounds like a robot and hates people.”
“Get him a fleece vest!”
It’s going to be 87° in Des Moines today. https://t.co/dxlDZ2rIZl
— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) May 31, 2023
there is no meaningful anti-trump movement in the republican party, just as there wasn't during the 2016 republican primary and there wasn't during all four years of his term. it's his party and it'll be his until he croaks.
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 30, 2023
War for Ukraine Day 463: President Zelenskyy Visits Moldova
mrmoshpotato
It was the POS Rethuglican party for decades, but now it’s the Dump party.
Too bad, so sad, fuck ’em.
Enjoy the monster that your monster factory* finally created.
*h/t driftglass
Tony Jay
Credit where it’s due. It might have taken him 70+ years and decades of heavy groundwork by generations of nihilistic fucks, but Trump finally made a business deal that he hasn’t made a financial loss on. He’ll go to jail, sure, and eventually to hell, but financially, he’s finally made his racist prick of a Daddy proud.
As for DeSantis, if he wasn’t so sexy and charismatic his campaign would be in real trouble right now.
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay:
Someone’s a fan of meatballs!
NotMax
“Hi, I’m Ron DeSantis. What’s your #8212;— Line!”
//
NotMax
Screwed that up. Fix.
“Hi, I’m Ron DeSantis. What’s your —— Line!”
//
Ishiyama
@mrmoshpotato:
Someone’s a fan of meatballs!
Doen’t anybody but me remember R.Crumb’s meatball comic from long, long ago?
mrmoshpotato
@Ishiyama: Drawing a blank here.
Tony Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Hey, I know meatballs. I make a fantastic meatball. RoDS ain’t no juicy, flavourful meatball, he’s a wannabe goombah.
Origuy
Vaguely remembered it. R Crumb’s Meatball
Anne Laurie
@Origuy: ‘You gets no bread with one meatball!’
prostratedragon
@Anne Laurie: And no spaghetti!
Oh, what a favorite! I’ve heard that in Argentina under Peron, restaurants were required to serve a cena minimal or something to those who asked, which resulted in many waiters HOLLERING the order back to the kitchen, the bastards.
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Don’t British cooks remain consistent and boil them to within a centimeter of their life?
:)
Frankensteinbeck
Yet again, these tweets come close to the dynamic but miss the crucial twist:
Most of the primary voters described, whether or not they like Trump’s sleazy tone, will go for a leader they see as even crueler and more effective at hurting their enemies. DeSantis’s strategy is to be exactly that person, and he’s good at it. However, he is too weak to hit back when Trump hits him, and as soon as that became clear he started bleeding support. A weak leader cannot be relied on as a champion. Ironic, since Trump is also visibly weak, but next to DeSantis he looks like Achilles.
WereBear
You know they want their primary on WWE. Though there’s always the danger they will decide they prefer wrestlers.
Most of the starring cast of the original Predator all went into politics…
ColoradoGuy
The GOP base has actually become the movie Idiocracy. They want stupid, they want loud, they want violent, and will accept no substitutes.
NotMax
@ColoradoGuy
Dread and circuses.
//
moops
Ron can turn this around. a bare-chested horse ride on a hot day could flip the whole thing. Trump cannot actually compete with someone that can demonstrate physicality. The GOP are all id. They have no actual policy goals, just hurting the right people and vicarious emotional attachment.
Ron would be as bad a US President as Putin, and he could still do this.
eclare
@NotMax:
Hehehe…
Jackie
@moops: While wearing his white boots, of course ;D
WereBear
I find the most annoying part is how the never-Trumpers simply mine what we have been saying for over two decades and present it like it’s one of their brilliant insights.
When, if ANYONE had listened to us back when, we wouldn’t be here now. We called it as a warning, and they gave it to us.
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie: “Those boots wore him.”
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear:
You need to start listening to the Professional Left podcast if you don’t already. You’ll find kindred spirits with driftglass and bluegal.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
Who boils a meatball?
Are you sure you weren’t just peeping in on someone washing their undertackle in a sink? Because in the absence of bidets, that’s a thing.
WereBear
@mrmoshpotato: I found Driftglass’s blog like, midway through W’s first term. Love the Professional Left Podcast — I’m on their Patreon.
He’s a classic example of what R’s do to everyone who isn’t rich. Lost a professional job in 2008’s disaster and never got another real one.
I know people who lost careers, homes, and security the same way. All the talent waste with Republicans would doom us slower, but of course they hurry it.
They are a death cult.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
Yes this. R D’S reminds me of movie versions of the mob ‘associates’ that got knocked off at half time. Let’s hope he gets knocked off well and truly either in the primary or the general. He is a considered and able fascist to trump’s more instinctual approach.
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
The only possible route to a DeSantis ‘win, given he’s obviously not going to campaign aggressively on Trump’s record of failing the MAGOP at every turn, rests on the Orange One being removed one way or another from the Primary contest and having no other choice but to throw RoDS his full support as heir apparent to buy a pardon for all the shit he’s accused of.
If that happens (unlikely in the extreme) the MAGOP will close ranks around RoDS, all of the Oppo crap already thrown at him will be memory holed and the wingnut wurlitzer will declare that he is, always has been, and always will be, a flawless vessel for the vinegary boiled piss that constitutes modern conservatism.
The MSM will fall in line, so desperate to make it a horse-race that every single one of RoDS’ many and manifest flaws will be rebranded as a canny reinvention of what a successful candidate should be that shouldn’t work but – you’ll never guess the twist – ‘somehow’ has all of the pundits raving about his fresh, new, in-your-face style. He’s not grumpy, he’s street-mean. He’s not wooden, he’s poised. He’s not extremist, he’s radical. Etc Etc, you know how it goes.
It won’t work. The truth is that Americans are waking up to the fascism of the MAGOP and most of them don’t like it at all, but that won’t stop their machine from going through the motions. There’s a huge amount of money to be grifted during the various stages of a Presidential year election, and you’ve got to run someone if you want to suck up your share of it.
TS
@Tony Jay:
Trump would turn himself into a write-in if he lost the primaries and there would be millions of his supporters who would write in his name on the ballot paper. I cannot imagine him throwing his support to any other candidate
The GOP powers know this – which is why they will all fall in line behind trump. It would be impossible for any other GOP candidate to win the general.
chrome agnomen
@Ishiyama: remember it? hell, I have it!
mrmoshpotato
@TS:
You make Dump sound like he’s a narcissist skidmark.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
Agree with most of what you write as usual. However I demur about most USians waking up to the fascist menace looming there. Blogs like this are not ‘most people in the US’. I know from over 50 years of industrial and political organising that something that seems obvious to the politically active is completely obscure to people for whom politics broadly is a foreign and boring thing.
The real challenge for the left now is to recover real life organising both politically and in the workplace. Neo liberalism with a human face pace Blairism, Clintonism and, tbf, Obamism, is over. If not, democracy is done and dusted.
The left needs to rediscover real life organising and full throated support of economic redistribution, social emancipation and the necessary connection between the two.
Tony Jay
@TS:
Oh hell yeah, he’d absolutely do that. But I was talking about how R0DS could, theoretically, take the Primary crown and go into the General as the MAGOP candidate.
One could kind of imagine Trump throwing a wobbly and declaring himself the candidate of the National Patriot American Citizens Party, but then having a long, sit-down session with his lawyers where the phrases “You’re fucked unless…” and “You gotta make a pardon worth his while…” come up a LOT.
A ratfucking third-party run would be Trump’s go-to if screwing the Republican Party was his main priority, but it’s not. His main priority over the next year or two will be staying out of prison, and putting Joe Biden and a Congressional super-majority of Democrats back in power in early 2025 does not get him anywhere near that.
HeartlandLiberal
Ron DeathSantis is animatronic device, which Disney corp refuses to service anymore. I read this the other day on DailyKos. I believed it.
zhena gogolia
Fuck, DeSantis and I are in the same state.
I was awakened last night at 11:00 PM by someone screaming the MF-word in the hotel hallway, and not in jest. Maybe that was him.
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
That’s true enough, but it’s a long term project that will take decades. What I was referring to was the effect in the voting booth of the MAGOP’s deep-dive into All Kulturkampf, All of the time. They’re losing elections they could win and forcing Americans in even the most deep-red states to take off their blinders and really acknowledge for once that their policies on school censorship, mass gun slaughter and abortion are hurting their kids.
It wouldn’t take very much of a switch in attitude amongst the potential/occasional Republican voting set to see a couple of percentage point drop in the MAGOP vote, and in closer races, especially where the Dem vote is fired up by exactly the same over-reach that turns off Mr & Mrs Whitebread Bush-Fan, that could be devastating.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
More likely someone talking to him.
rikyrah
@WereBear:
No lie told 😒
twbrandt
The Senate passed the debt ceiling bill. Disaster averted. Biden ftw.
Baud
@twbrandt:
👍
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
True enough. I wonder if and when the ‘finely’ gerrymandered seats in red states get so thinly sliced that a reasonable electoral shift in those states might tip a whole lot over into a Dem victory. I also wonder if a more concerted effort in a number of rural districts might not swing enough ‘raw votes’ to put a Dem Senator over the top in an otherwise ‘conservative’ state. From what I can read, a couple of percent in rural areas in some states could mean the difference between a Dem Senator and none.
In Australia the ALP doesn’t win many rural electorates as such, but it is still a strong electoral presence in many, and makes the difference in many more between a Conservative victory, and a more moderate independent. The trade union movement in these seats is a vital part of this electoral effort.
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
Yup. It’s going to take a huge effort, won’t work everywhere, etc etc, but the Dems are sitting on top of a Senate where their control is only possible because they won BOTH Georgia Senate races.
Fucking Georgia?!? That’s amazing.
More of that. Whittle those artificial MAGOP majorities down. Make those fucks pay. And as a result they’ll get a Democratic Party in power that, while flawed, is so much better than the UK Labour Party that it’s not even funny.
Suzanne
@moops:
This is true, I remember one of those million “Republican primary debates”, the ones with Trump and like 18 other schmucks, where Trump was just absolutely laying into Jeb Bush and taunting him about his family. And I said to Mr. Suzanne, “The best thing that Jeb Bush could do for his campaign would be to walk across the stage and punch Trump in the face”. It was true then and it remains true, but it’s harder now that he has a Secret Service detail.
Watching a major American political party become nothing but a vehicle for its members’ psychodrama has been…..wow, something to watch.
Geminid
@TS: If another Republican beat him, Trump would not need to run 3rd Party in order to sandbag the winner. Some of his hard core supporters would stay home even if Trump gave the winner enthusiastic support, which I think Trump would be incapable of anyway. It would take a much stronger candidate than any of the prospects to make up for those defections.
Cameron
@Tony Jay: ….and this from a denizen of the land that offers us such culinary delicacies as Spotted Dick and Toad In The Hole?
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
Agree with you, particularly about the difference between the UK Labour Party and the US Dems. Twenty years ago it wasn’t the case, but now it is clear. The US liberal centre and centre left are much more alive to the threat than its UK equivalent. It’s astonishing to this Oz socialist. But there you are. You can’t deny reality.
The UK Labour Party are walking into a buzz saw, imo. If they win next year, they will be facing a productivity and income catastrophe, worse than anything since WW2. But they have not refurbished their ideological or organisational structures to take up the democratic challenges this poses and win both the ideological and organisational war. Starmer is too ‘green’ a leader imo, and the people around him are either Blairites leftovers or hoping to be that.
One thing about the US you can count on. Once something doesn’t seem to work, they get busy trying something that might. The UK ruling political class is by contrast, complacent and relatively useless.
sab
@Cameron: Midwest has Toad in a Hole also. Completely different dish from UK version but same weird name.
frosty
That was Fetterman’s approach in PA: “Every County, every vote.” You can’t win the state just by running up Pittsburgh and Philly. In my County, if we get to 34%, the Democrat wins the state.
Ramalama
@Origuy: Mrs Yahootie, Bertrand Russell, Kim Novak – together at last!
Aussie Sheila
@frosty:
Great stuff! Based on Australian political experience, rural areas should be organised as hard politically as the more urban working class electorates. The rural working class is always worse off, paid less and has less social power than their urban sisters and brothers. It pays big dividends to organise there, even if you don’t win every seat you contest. Turning up and showing the face of the Party is worth quite a few votes. Enough to make the difference in many seats.
Spanky
So the WaPo has the score of who voted what way. Dems voting nay were Fetterman, Markey, Merkley, and Warren. The Independent voting nay was Bernie. Sinema was an aye in other words.
Tony Jay
@Cameron:
If I called them l’pouding éponge aux raisins secs et crème anglaise and saucisse en croûte avec jûs they’d be no less delicious, but would lose that essential sense that the first mouthful comes via the ear.
Now I’m hungry.
Betty
@Anne Laurie: The kids used to say this when I was growing up in a small town in the 50s. They nicknamed one of the guys Meatball and then call this out. Never knew where it came from, so thanks!
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
Aye. Next election I’m voting for my MP, not the Party, and if they use their favoured dirty tricks of bureaucratic fuckery and top-down authoritarianism to boot him in favour of a plastic skinned yes-man, they’re not even getting that from me.
The Dems won in 2020 by uniting all strands of the Party and bringing progressive ideas to the fore, but that’s anathema to the Nu-Lab scrotes for whom down-punching spite and ‘whatever gets us invitations to Rupert’s next wedding’ are always and forever their guiding stars.
Aussie Sheila
@Spanky:
I am glad the latest governmental cluster got solved. Thank you Biden and his administration. But may I say a big F you to Sinema?
Beyond Manchin or any other hopeless Dem Senator, she is something special.
I assume her vote wasn’t pivotal or else something even worse would have been extracted. She is good for something though. She is a standing and enduring warning to US Dems and progressives-never, ever endorse someone who has been a member of the US Greens.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
Either by way of ear or mouth, they are both awful. Sorry, not sorry.
charon
@Aussie Sheila:
Bullshit. American politics is mostly culture and religion now. If people claim to care about economics, jobs, taxes, corruption whatever is only that they do not want to admit what they really care about.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
My fingers are crossed that the TUs and constituent parties can force UK Labour to either PR or preferential voting. That is the only way the truly awful Labour right can be put back into their place. They represent a minority of the anti Tory working class vote, but the FPTP system rewards their type of politics and paradoxically assists the Lib Dems to the detriment of the overall anti Tory vote.
Omnes Omnibus
@Aussie Sheila: She is horrible, but she won in Arizona and that was a key component to getting and keeping control of the Senate.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I wish
mrmoshpotato
@sab:
Are you talking about where an egg is fried in the hole you cut into a piece of bread?
JML
More evidence of the fraudulence of RDS: apparently he, his wife, and the campaign staff can’t agree on how to pronounce his name (they’re going back and forth on whether it should be “Dee-Santis” or “Deh-Santis”) which is just ridiculous. It’s been his name his whole stupid life, changing it for a presidential campaign is the least authentic thing you could do. How the hell did this loser ever win an election ever?
Aussie Sheila
@charon:
If you think politics in the 2020s is mostly culture and religion, I don’t know what you are about. The Right would like you to think that. In fact it is still about what it’s always been about-who gets what and how hard do they have to fight to get it. The Right and pearl clutching Centre have been relatively successful in the US pretending it’s about culture and religion. They would like you to think that . But nobody really does deep down. Real life organising teaches you that. You should try it some time.
mrmoshpotato
@frosty:
Make sure every county knows what a fraudulent ass Mehmet Oz is. Also, that he lives in New Jersey and doesn’t know what a veggie tray is.
Aussie Sheila
@Omnes Omnibus:
I am quite aware of that. First time shame on you etc etc; So long as there isn’t a second time, it’s a lesson well learned.
charon
@Aussie Sheila:
Here in the real U.S., pretty much every (white, blacks excepted) regular churchgoer is Republican. Check, for example, Pew Research for the statistics. People who seldom or never go to church are Democrats.
mrmoshpotato
@charon:
So, both sides?
P Thomas
Damn…there goes my fleece vest back into the depths of the closet.
Aussie Sheila
@JML:
Its a small thing, but I am looking forward to trump tearing him to shreds face to face. It will be a small payback for the political and social bullying he has landed on the relatively defenceless in Florida.
After that I look forward to trump being taken to the woodshed by both the DoJ and I hope, a formidable and relentless Dem Presidential campaign. Biden has handed the Dems the best performing administration in my political memory. He should be rewarded by the most ferocious and relentless political campaign to reelect him and VP Harris in living memory.
mrmoshpotato
@JML:
I’m sticking with “DeathSantis” because 1 of every 400 Floridians died of COVID-19 on the bastard’s watch while he denied its existence.
Aussie Sheila
@charon:
Not every person of Christian faith is conservative, even in the US. Just because most conservative churchgoers vote Republican doesn’t mean all churchgoers are Republican. Some of the best and most talented union organisers I have known were dedicated churchgoers and devout Christians.
Ksmiami
@P Thomas: eh it’s summer now anyway…
charon
@mrmoshpotato:
No comprende.
I am well aware generalizations have exceptions. Hillary Clinton, as an example, is very religiously active. Nontheless, its pretty exceptional for an atheist or agnostic to have any use for the GOP.
Denali5
The one thing the DeSantis has going for him is that he is not old. Biden has done a remarkable job in his first term- but is it realistic to think that the best person for the hardest job in the world is someone who will be 86 at the end of his term? People are quite aware that even TFG is old. There is a sense that the country needs younger leadership.
Yes, culture and religion play an enormous part in people’s political viewpoint. But people are leaving the church because not only because of the pedophile issues but also because the church has failed to deal with the issue of gender identity.
mrmoshpotato
@charon:
So you’re blaming “American politics” and not just the Republican party?
Aussie Sheila
@charon:
Really? I give you SV libertarians and the rest of the so called freeze peach Aholes. They are all of a piece. Either ideological free fire zones, or quasi and not so quasi authoritarians and would be Duces in their own fiefdoms. Religion as such is a predictor of nothing much imo.
Ken
I know there are already plenty of nicknames for DeSantis, as this thread shows, but surely “Bubble Boy” should be in there somewhere? Any time he interacts with people outside a carefully-curated group of supporters, he explodes — as in those first tweets at the top.
brantl
@moops: He’s kind of flabby, though.
Chris
@Aussie Sheila:
One of the big problems, though, is that “the rural working class” is disproportionately illegal immigrants. The farm hands and tenant farmers who flocked to populists like Huey Long and William Jennings Bryan a hundred years ago still exist, but they’re disproportionately people who can’t vote, because of all the changes to immigration laws between then and now.
Not that there aren’t plenty of illegal immigrants in the urban working class too. But the urban middle to upper middle class is a lot more receptive to liberal politics for various reasons, which gives you another in. Not to mention all the parts of rural America where the middle class has effectively just collapsed, leaving a world of haves (all Republican) and have-nots.
Miss Bianca
@JML:
Not that I don’t agree with you, but…Did you know that Ronald RAY-gun used to pronounce his last name REE-gan? Truth! It was “Ree-gan” during the 1968 Presidential campaign, and had morphed to “RAY-gun” by 1980.
That guy did all right in the Presidential sweepstakes, as I recall.
kindness
DeSantis saw that the Republican base loved Trump’s bullying. So Ron amped that up as his governing style. The thing is though, Ron’s bullying is more of a high school senior bullying a freshman. There isn’t any joy in the moment, just force and terror. Trump brought the base along for the ride and made fun of his targets the whole way. Trump made bullying fun for the base. Ron? Nope. Not so much. And curiously for an Ivy League graduate, he still hasn’t figured it out.
The Republican base deserves the DeSantis they’re getting. Cretins, the whole lot of them.
RaflW
That Newsmax chyron saying “DeSepsis launches 2024 campaign in Iowa” is quite the effort to just erase Ronda & Elonda’s big Spaces misadventure.
Mike in NC
I’ve settled on ‘DeSaster’ as being the best nickname for this fascist creep from Floriduh. May he and Trump destroy each other.
RaflW
@WereBear: Jesse Ventura went from WWF to small suburb mayor to governor of MN. So, yeah, a professional wrestler could become the GOP nominee (though Ventura was nominally part of the Independence Party, which went exactly nowhere even with him as governor)
re: Never Trumpers @20, I still very much believe the Lincoln Project is 95% about amassing lots of small dollar donations from frustrated liberals. Their ads are kind of clever, but I doubt they move the needle at all with swing or certainly with conservative voters. But Conway, Wilson, Schmidt etc need a gig since they’re totally apostate on the right now.
They didn’t change their grift, just their marks.
RaflW
@Tony Jay: I wish your assertion that “the truth is that Americans are waking up to the fascism of the MAGOP and most of them don’t like it at all” were true.
But the latest Marquette Univ poll has TFG up 5 points over Biden, and Puddin’ Boots +4. Yes, I know polling is not doing a great job here in the 21st century, but even if it’s off somewhat significantly, roughly half the country hasn’t even noticed the fascism, or more to the point, likes it.
JML
@Miss Bianca: I did not know that about Reagan. but that’s also the difference between running for office now and back then. Stuff like that didn’t come out or turn into an internet firestorm, because there wasn’t anything resembling the internet back then. you could manage your political image entirely through control of a select few media sources and if a gaffe didn’t actually make the papers then it was gone forever. You just can’t do that now.
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
Your sarcasm becomes you!
Ruckus
@ColoradoGuy:
At least they finally have an ethos.
Rocks
@Denali5:
Biden’s first term has been one of extraordinary success in the face of daunting odds. Just this spring he rolled and neutered the tiny Republican majority in the House. He’s got my vote, my money, and my enthusiastic door to door campaigning next year.
sab
@mrmoshpotato: Yep. I think the UK version does something with dough and sausages.
misterpuff
@TS:
Well, it’s an easy name to spell
hitchhiker
@WereBear:
Exhibit A, Charlie Sykes and Tom Nichols on Sykes’ podcast, (The Bulwark) just the other day. They’re very proud of their Reagan-era/W-era conservatism, back when The Heritage Foundation was a must-read for “everyone.”
They were talking about how Nichols tweeted something about the insanity of the GOP, and how he got mobbed by liberals yelling that it was always insane. No, they smugly agreed, it used to be great.
They never, ever address things like Reagan’s monster expansion of the national debt, or W’s catastrophic (national-debt-expanding, deathly) occupation of Iraq. That stuff was just liberals needing something to yell about, I guess.
It still pisses me off to think that Reagan put his “good times are back!” revolution on a credit card. Shit, I could make my house look amazing, too, if I just borrowed a ton of money with the plan that my grandkids would figure out a way to pay it back.
Chris
@hitchhiker:
Or simply the criminality. The constant, endless, in-your-face criminality. From Iran-contra to the way Iran-contra ended with a Republican president pardoning everyone to Republican operatives rioting to stop an election count in Florida to torture chambers and illegal wiretapping. Literally everything about the Trump era has deep roots in the last five Republican presidents. It’s a party whose only reaction to Watergate was that they should have embraced Nixon harder.
Dopey-o
They attend Eversore’s Church of the Tiresome Redeemer.