Brian Beutler responded to this by posting a piece he wrote earlier this year. What he wrote then still rings true to me: [gift link]
Charitably, we could say Ron DeSantis’s primary campaign flopped because he and other Republicans chose not to write Donald Trump out of the party after January 6, 2021, and so there was no niche for him to fill. If Trump’s response to losing the 2020 election isn’t disqualifying, maybe it means he was right to be mad; maybe it means he didn’t really lose. If that’s the case, then he’s a strong option for 2024, and there’s no need for a pretender. With Trump out of the way, the primary would’ve been a real dogfight between many more candidates; with him in the picture, nobody cut from the same cloth stood a chance.
More accurately, DeSantis lost because he has no charisma, and lacked the courage and integrity to level with ride-or-die Trumpers that Trump actually lost the 2020 election. He also has an annoying voice, and is short. His height is actually pretty average, but he’s shorter than most successful male politicians in the U.S., and (most importantly) he’s highly self-conscious about it. He carries himself in a way that makes people view him as short, more than he actually has difficulty reaching things on high shelves.
And so Trump and his supporters exploited it. They mocked him over these superficial weaknesses knowing that his character weakness (his lack of dignity and integrity) would inhibit him from responding in kind. You might say the meatball was in his court and he curled into the fetal position.
This is all quite stupid; it’s actually pretty demoralizing for people who got into politics for high-minded reasons. But it’s an irreducible fact about any calling that rewards popularity. And so people who take the elevated aspects of politics seriously, who want to protect their accomplishments and make progress on others—they have to make some degree of peace with the fact that low-brow means can advance high-brow ends. And if the high-road leads to hell, they shouldn’t take it.
When the insider account of the Harris/Walz campaign comes out, and we find out which highly paid consultant stopped Walz from saying “weird”, I hope we make sure that person is never employed by any Democratic campaign in the future. Walz was onto something. They’re abusers, and they’re also weird. DeSantis is deeply, irrevocably, weird. Walz also had way more insight into how to talk to Fox-addled voters than any DC consultant, because he had to do it to win in his red House district.
One thing that really bothers me about the whole Walz/weird thing is that they may have stopped saying it because the political reporters and insiders got tired of hearing it. But you can’t listen to reporters / pundits /consultants when they’re “tired” of something, because repeat, repeat, repeat your message is Politics 101.
They’re weird, they abuse women, they rape teenagers and they believe a bunch of nonsensical shit. I see no downside in repeating that.
