Not much, if 538 is to be believed. They have the likelihood of a DeSantis victory at 92-8 in their “deluxe” model.
Speaking of DeSantis, I wonder if he’ll appear with Biden when Biden comes down to view the devastation. Remember when Christy met with Obama? Might make for some fun news stories, for some value of fun.
I wonder if he’ll take Floridians displaced by the hurricane, put em on busses and send em up north.
(Displaced Floridian upon stepping off the bus in Chicago) “Wait, but I’m white!”
He did appear with Biden, as you may have seen. And now there’s this:
Very disappointed by the Crist/DeSantis attack ads. I mean, all of the crap that DeathSatan has done just basically writes itself. All I’ve heard tho is a tepid anti anti-abortion ad.
Here, I’ve seen a lot of ads in which Crist points out (accurately) that when governor he did things to lower the cost of property insurance, while so far DeSantis has done nothing on that issue. And is highly unlikely to help Floridians in this way.
There are probably others (I tend to flip away when commercials start, so I may well have missed them). But DeSantis has about 100 times* the amount of money Crist has for campaign ads. That makes a difference.
*not an exact figure
He has 21 times. Not as much as you said, but still an insanely huge advantage.
This more recent article suggests the gap narrowed.
That article says DeSantis raised about $200m compared to Crist’s $31m. So that suggests it’s closer to 6.5 times as much.
DeSantis has been able to raise such eye-popping amounts of money because donating to his gubernatorial campaign is a “safe” way for Republican donors to get on his good side in advance of a potential Presidential run. If it comes down to Trump vs. DeSantis in the primary, then donating to one or the other will be seen as picking sides. But since Trump ostensibly supports DeSantis’ reelection, there’s no conflict right now.
The question is what he’s going to do with all that money. After the final accounting, he’s almost certain to have an enormous positive balance in his state campaign accounts. FEC rules should prohibit using those funds for a Presidential campaign, but the FEC is toothless entity. I’m sure he has a plan.
South Florida resident here. I don’t consume a lot of media, but I haven’t seen a single Crist ad; it’s been DeSantis all the time, everywhere. Even on Words with Friends!
DeSantis now has this bonkers ad out, narrated by… God? Or maybe Moses or some minor prophet. I can’t tell. Yeesh.
He’s got some friends in Tallahassee, that’s for sure:
Because, jeez, he had to have a book:
Rick Wilson shared a collage of ‘books by failed Presidential candidates’ on Twitter, today, as a pointed response to this news from DeSantis.
Sadly, that collage does nothing to negate the fact that successful Presidential candidates have published books before their own runs, too. (Obama, with his 2006 The Audacity of Hope, for one.)
Asked Tuesday to choose between Trump or DeSantis, a smiling Passidomo said, “What?” Asked a second time, “Trump or DeSantis,” she again said, “what?” and then returned to her office.
LOL, okay, Stone Cold Steve Austin.
One thing about it, I can’t really see a cult of personality forming around this guy. Of course, I never would have thought in a million years that anyone other than a lunatic would go ape shit over someone like the CFSG.
Me either. He’s too vanilla. What he does and says is extremely nasty, maybe (probably) worse than Trump, but he doesn’t have the wacky appeal that gets him attention. That kind of thing belongs to folks like Trump, Kari Lake, MTG, Herschel Walker. The oddballs.
DeSantis is like the evil principal/dean in an '80s screwball comedy that the wacky ragtag group of protagonists have to defeat through hijinks and a lot of heart.
“Those liberals are on Double Secret Probation.”
Frickin’ cool idea - come onnnn, Lincoln Project!
Dan
That is actually an advantage. He seems like a serious executive, not a constantly erratic who learned how to run a country by watching Duck Soup (as if Trump would watch something as highbrow as the Marx Brothers). DeSantis has been watching Trump and taking notes, and he is making a concerted effort to create an proto-fascist movement instead of the rabble of “Oathkeepers” that adulated Trump, et al without having an actual plan. Whether he will be successful at that remains to be seen but when he gets to sell himself as the governor with the most effective response to a natural disaster while “the Democrats” sat on their hands and let Florida suffer (evidence notwithstanding) he’s definitely developing a playbook that makes him seem like the guy who can metaphorically make the trains run on time. He can use the ‘oddballs’ to really rile people up, and then sweep in as the ‘reasonable’ alternative.
People don’t seem to know this but Hitler and the National Socialists were actually promoted as the ‘rational’ face of fascism because they created the Nuremberg Laws defining “Jewishness”, and even before that were the more orderly of multiple fascist/anti-Semetic organizations based on the Völkisch movement in Weimar-era Germany. They gained a patina of legitimacy even while they were not especially popular among average Germans, and then swayed them, “gradually, then suddenly” into mass persecution of Jews (many of whom had come to Germany and particularly Berlin for its cosmopolitan tolerance), Communists, Roma, homosexuals, et cetera. DeSantis is smart enough not to directly target Jewish people and instead is making an enemy of LGBQT+ people and the families that support them, as well as appealing to vaccine denialists and other conspiranoists. He’s a smart, careful, dangerous guy with his eye on the Oval Office and the power that it holds.
Stranger
He scares me a hell of a lot more than Trump if he can get elected. And in a rational world he should get a much larger following because he appears so much more competent than Trump.
But this isn’t a rational world, and I don’t know if he can get enough people excited enough to go to the polls for him.