While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is out there fighting to defeat an invisible thing he calls “the woke mind virus,” his young presidential campaign is stumbling like a drunk fraternity bro with flop sweat.
It all began – poorly – with a messy Twitter launch last month. Since then, the governor’s campaign has generated little more than fodder for memes showing him looking uncomfortable around other people. Voters aren’t rallying around his incessant tilting at woke windmills or his perversely weird war with Disney.
And his chief rival, former President Donald Trump, has remained the far-and-away front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination despite being indicted for the second time this year.
It seems the governor might want to focus less on the question “How can I stop wokeness?” and more on “Why am I losing to someone who keeps getting arrested?”
Let’s start with DeSantis’ pants falling down, metaphorically, as he made his campaign announcement via Twitter Spaces on May 24 along with Elon Musk and some other weird rich guy. The launch was riddled with tech glitches, and then featured DeSantis and Musk whining on about arcane right-wing grievances.
At that point, according to the FiveThirtyEight national average, DeSantis was polling at 20.6% compared with Trump at 54.3%. The Florida governor is a big name – touted incessantly on Fox News and in other conservative media circles – so one would expect a polling bump after he formally announced his run for president.
But there was no bump. At the midpoint of this month, DeSantis was polling at 21.4%, an increase of less than a percentage point. Trump, meanwhile, was down to 53.4%, a decrease of less than a percentage point.
Not exactly Ron-mentum.
But what about state-level numbers? Those are what really matter in an election!
In Iowa, a National Research poll taken earlier this month found Trump up by 15 percentage points over DeSantis.
A National Research poll in Nevada, taken after DeSantis’ announcement, had Trump up more than 30 percentage points.
A recent New Hampshire poll by American Greatness found Trump had increased his lead over DeSantis by 5 percentage points over last month. The former president now leads the governor 44% to 12%, according to the poll.
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Beyond polling, DeSantis' early presidential campaigning has shown Americans a man who doesn't seem to enjoy presidential campaigning and who struggles to laugh in a way that replicates traditional human behavior. Recently, a couple dozen people gathered outside Walt Disney World in Orlando carrying signs supporting DeSantis. This would seem good, but others in the group were waving swastika flags, making the whole affair what political strategists likely call "a bit too Nazi-ish."
So to recap, the much-ballyhooed conservative warrior from Florida is up against a candidate who lost the last presidential election, was impeached twice by the House of Representatives, fomented an attack on the U.S. Capitol, was recently found liable for sexual abuse in a civil lawsuit, is under state and federal indictment with two other serious investigations pending and spends most of his time writing conspiratorial nonsense in all-caps on his own social media site … and DeSantis is not just losing but losing badly.
Some of that can be explained by the Republican base’s addiction to Trump and his ongoing narrative of white victimhood. And DeSantis’ fortunes could well improve as the former president’s legal problem worsen.
But still, the governor’s stagnant poll numbers and unwillingness or inability to fight back against Trump are a lousy reflection on his campaign and its obsessive focus on battling “the woke,” a term he can’t seem to explain.
Asked to define “woke” this month, DeSantis said: “Look, we know what woke is, it’s a form of cultural Marxism.”
You can’t define a word that means nothing with a term that also means nothing. That’s like me saying, “Well, we know what flarpitude is, it’s a form of horticultural Taoism.”
Central to DeSantis’ "war on woke" has been his sub-war on Disney, which is apparently “woke” because the corporation voiced tepid opposition to the governor’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law and makes movies that could – like the world around them – include people who aren’t white, straight and cisgender.
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That whole kerfuffle is working out great for DeSantis. A new Navigator poll found that over the past year, Disney’s net favorability rating dropped only 1 point, with 63% of Americans having a favorable view of the entertainment giant.
The same poll found that since November, DeSantis’ net favorability has fallen 16 points, with 32% of Americans having a favorable view of the man Trump dubbed “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
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Among registered voters, the poll found 50% of voters side with Disney in its battle with DeSantis, while only 33% side with the governor. What’s worse, a sizable 17% of voters aren’t even aware of the whole ridiculous conflict, which has to really hurt if you're DeSantis.
(This is the part where Goofy comes out and plays a sad trombone: Whomp-whomp.)
I’m wondering if the woke mind virus DeSantis is always on about infected the campaign and is now actively sabotaging his presidential aspirations. I suppose we’ll never know.
Much as we’ll never know what the heck a “woke mind virus” is. Or, quite likely, what DeSantis would be like if he won the GOP presidential nomination.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
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