Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is just a few months away from announcing his bid for president. His state’s 60-day legislative session begins today, and he’s expected to use the next two months to pass as much red-meat conservative legislation as possible. Doing so will help endear himself to the Republican base ahead of his entry into the GOP primary later this year.
Pundits have already spilled plenty of ink on the question of which of the two GOP frontrunners, Trump or DeSantis, is a greater threat to the country and democracy. Some think that Trump’s incompetence and temperament make him more dangerous; others call DeSantis “Trump with a brain” and insist that he’ll be able to implement the right-wing agenda that Trump is too clumsy to do. I’m not going to wade into that debate here — mainly because it’s a topic that causes people to lose their minds, but also because the Trump v. DeSantis debate is mostly hypothetical for those of us who will not be voting in the GOP primary.
What’s less hypothetical at this point is 1) that DeSantis is planning to run 2) that he has a real shot at winning the nomination 3) that Democrats need to begin developing a blueprint for how to beat him.
The Objective
Democrats’ first order of business will be to define their objective. Specifically, Democrats need to determine which voters they’ll need to win over to beat DeSantis.
In short, the answer is that Democrats need to target independent swing voters. There are many ways to slice the electorate into more precise demographic groups like suburban white women, blue-collar Latinos, non-college-educated black men, etc., etc. But by getting so granular, we lose sight of the big picture: that the 2024 presidential election will be decided by independent swing voters. Partisanship has become so calcified that barely anybody who identifies as a Democrat or Republican will be persuaded by campaign messaging or ads. Over 90% of Democrats will vote for the Democratic nominee, and over 90% of Republicans will vote for the Republican nominee. In other words, the only fertile ground for voter persuasion is among independent voters.
If the election were held today, Democrats would have a serious problem on their hands because DeSantis is thriving (in relative terms) among that key demographic. One poll, which aligns with other surveys, found that 39% of independent voters view DeSantis favorably, and only 30% view him unfavorably. Compared to any other top-tier presidential candidates, that net +9 points is extremely impressive. Trump, for instance, is down 33% to 58% among independent voters, putting him 25 points underwater. Biden is only doing a smidge better than Trump, at 35% to 58%, for a net negative of 23 points.
The ultimate question for Democrats seeking to build a blueprint for defeating DeSantis will be how to peel off as much of his support from independent swing voters as possible.
The Blueprint
The first thing to understand about political messaging is that it’s most effective if there’s a fundamental truth behind what you’re saying. For example, Republican strategists won’t have success next year if they try to frame Joe Biden as an extremist. Even if you think there are legitimate reasons to call him one (and on certain issues, I’d agree), the fact is that Biden doesn’t come off as a mouth-foaming radical. Trying to frame him as one would be mostly futile.
For that same reason, Democrats can’t just dust off the Trump playbook and throw it at DeSantis. Unlike the former president, DeSantis doesn’t appear incompetent or dumb. He’s not unpredictable or unprepared. So the underlying theme that “this man is not fit to control the nuclear codes” won’t work against DeSantis as it would against Trump.
That said, what would an effective campaign against DeSantis look like? Below is my formulation, which relies on two fundamental attacks: one focused on his character and another on his political program.
(Before getting started, I want to be clear: this is a purely strategic proposal. A framework aligned with my political and policy preferences would look very different.)
The dominant message should focus on DeSantis’s character: frame him as a power-hungry, deceptive, and out-of-touch career politician.
DeSantis has tried to cultivate his image as a young, fresh, political outsider. If Democrats allow that idea to solidify in voters’ minds, Biden (or any other old, career politician) won’t stand a chance in 2024. The good news for Democrats is that DeSantis is more of a political creature than he’d like to admit.
By 2024, DeSantis will have run for four different political posts within ten years. He initially ran for the House in 2012, tried and failed to become a senator in 2016, and won the governorship in 2018. Now, he’s hoping to bail on that last job before his term is over to become president. Moreover, within that decade, he transformed from a small-government tea-party type to a populist bomb-thrower intent on wielding the power of the government against his political enemies.
All this sets the table for Democrats to expose DeSantis as just another out-of-touch career politician who’s willing to shapeshift and contort himself into whatever position will help him win his next election. All that populist, man-of-the-people rhetoric? Democrats should make the case that it’s just meant to compensate for his rather aristocratic background. How many voters know, for instance, that the guy who’s always railing against “elites” is himself a graduate of Harvard and Yale? Of course, there’s nothing wrong with academic achievement, but there is something hypocritical about a dual Ivy League man pitching himself as a homegrown Florida boy taking on the coastal elites.
Another weak point for DeSantis is that he’s unlikeable. His past colleagues say this, his current donors say this, and it should be that hard to make independent voters say it too. DeSantis, in other words, fails the “I’d want to have a beer with him” test. That might sound a bit abstract, but voters — especially relatively disengaged independent voters — vote largely based on gut feelings. And all the available evidence suggests that DeSantis makes people a bit nauseous.
Some swing voters are already beginning to see DeSantis’s character flaws. In one focus group, a swing voter said that “he’s trying to be like, like the God of Florida instead of being the governor of Florida.” In another, participants were asked to describe DeSantis in a single word. The group’s only three self-described moderates called him: “stubborn,” “political-driven,” and “selfish.”
If DeSantis is the GOP nominee, it will be Democrats’ task to make the rest of the nation’s independent swing voters feel the same way.
The secondary message should focus on DeSantis’s political program: frame his ideas as radical, extreme, and unnecessarily cruel. But choose the terrain wisely and don’t focus on the culture war.
Getting this right will be hard for Democrats. That’s because many of the issues that DeSantis champions are absolutely toxic on the left but pretty popular among independents and the general public. It’s going to be tough for the Democratic Party’s political class to swallow the fact that a lot of voters don’t share their belief that some of the things DeSantis is doing are bigoted, racist, homophobic, or otherwise offensive.
Specifically, a number of the battles that DeSantis is waging in the culture war are actually pretty popular. Take, for instance, DeSantis’s push to restrict what schools can teach about gender and sexuality. While progressive activists lambasted the legislation they nicknamed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill (which prohibits “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels”), most voters agree with that legislation’s objective. A New York Times poll found that 71% of independents (and even 42% of Democrats) opposed “allowing public school teachers to provide classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity to children in elementary school.”
Democrats and progressives might not want to hear it, but they are on the losing side of certain culture war issues. If they decide to criticize DeSantis’s handling of these issues — including his opposition to allowing transgender women to participate in women’s sports, to covid restrictions and mandates, and to emphasizing race in the classroom — they may be surprised to find that most voters tend tend to side with the governor.
Instead, Democrats should hit DeSantis where he is actually weak and on issues where voters see his position as extreme. One obvious contender is DeSantis’s position on Social Security and Medicare. In 2013, he voted for a budget resolution that would have cut those services by a quarter of a trillion dollars. He’s also voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and has opposed expanding Medicaid to Florida. Together, this opens the door for Democrats to hit DeSantis’s economic agenda as cruel and heartless; as wanting to take hard-earned money from old people, dismantle the social safety net, and throw seniors, the middle-class, and poor people off their healthcare.
Another soft spot for DeSantis is his position on abortion. While the bill he signed in Florida last year only restricts abortion after 15 weeks, such a relatively moderate position is probably unsustainable for a Republican nominee. So far, DeSantis has managed to dodge questions on if he plans to take that ban further and how he’d approach the issue as president. But if DeSantis does come out atop the GOP primary field, it’s hard to imagine him having done so without charting a more aggressive position on abortion. That’ll be politically toxic among independents, and Democrats should be ready to pounce.
A similar dynamic exists on several other contentious issues. As with abortion, DeSantis has avoided staking out positions on military funding for Ukraine, cutting (or raising) taxes on the wealthy and corporations, gay marriage, free trade and import tariffs, and so on. DeSantis may be able to retain this ambiguity for the next few months, but that’ll change as soon as he officially enters the GOP primary.
In short, Democrats will have the opportunity to frame DeSantis as ideologically extreme, but they’ll need to choose the political terrain wisely. That means they’ll be better off highlighting issues where public sentiment is decisively against DeSantis (like the economy, taxes, abortion, and the social safety net) rather than issues that ignite their sense of moral indignation (like the culture wars).
What Won’t Work
Democrats should also know that there are a number of messages that won’t work. Unlike Trump, DeSantis doesn’t come off as unprepared, weak, inexperienced, or volatile. So while these attacks might work against a repeat Trump nomination, Democrats will need to take a very different tack against DeSantis.
Moreover, if DeSantis is the nominee, Democrats might find it tempting to use the most hyperbolic language available. Firing on all cylinders like that, however, would be a strategic miscalculation. The most likely outcome of calling him “DeathSantis” and a “fascist” or saying that he’ll “kill Democracy slowly and methodically” will be to leave Republicans outraged, Democrats energized, and independent voters rolling their eyes at the hyperbole.
To be crystal clear, I’d like to repeat that this is a strategic rather than a moral argument. If you genuinely believe that DeSantis is a fascist and represents a grave threat to American democracy, I won’t tell you to calm down or shut up. That’d be obnoxious on my part. Instead, I would propose that you consider whether or not these claims are really true. If you conclude that they are, then I’d encourage you to think through what’d be the most effective strategy for ensuring that DeSantis doesn’t win reelection.
Ultimately, Democrats will be better off with a precise and disciplined messaging strategy than an apocalyptic and scattershot one. If DeSantis is the nominee, Democrats should frame him as a power-hungry unlikeable career politician with extreme and unpopular ideas. If they can do that, I think we’ll be looking at another four years of Democratic control of the White House.