Ron DeSantis is really far behind Donald Trump in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination. Yet he argues that he has a better chance of defeating Joe Biden in the general election.
Florida Man Thinks He’s a Winner
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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To be fair … Hillary Clinton engaged in the same sort of fantastical thinking as DeSantis. Hardly unusual in politics. But Trump has this one in a lock. Why? Since Kennedy, we’ve favored visual media far more for the purposes of advancing candidates. The candidates who work the TV better tend to do better. Hillary was wooden and clunky (Does she have stage fright? Helen Hayes did, her entire life. Would HRC have loosened up if only on radio or interviews?) For this election cycle, Trump is taking up, what, about 70% of all the coverage? That means less for all the other candidates. When it gets down to just Trump and Biden? The process will favor Trump because he consistently gets more clicks and eyeballs.
All the Biden people have to do is remind voters that Trump was impeached twice, found guilty in the E. Jean Carroll case, let his voting base die of COVID-19, never severed himself from the Trump Organization while in office like he was legally required to do, had 5000 legal cases outstanding when he became president, etc. Trump’s record is there for anybody to see.
The real sticking point here is that Biden’s record is there for anybody to see too. Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, the generational shafting called student loans, the giant mess that is Amtrak (Acela is so flawed it would take gigaquads to describe it all), it’s pretty probable that the FBI has been covering for him in a kickback scandal roughly the size of Teapot Dome, etc.
That Trump is a criminal is not going to really shake much of his base. Many of them don’t care because, even though they don’t really follow the news, they know that Nixon was a crook, Reagan was too. Bill Clinton almost ended up in prison, and would have had he been genuinely and fairly investigated. Cheney should be in an orange jumpsuit in some prison somewhere for all his criminal acts.
But frankly, a lot of Biden’s supporters (i.e., chumps) genuinely think he’s an honest, admirable man. But he isn’t. Just like Trump. “Son, if you still chose to identify as male when you grow up, I hope that you, too, will plagiarize multiple times and lie repeatedly about what you’ve accomplished. Just like Joseph Robinette Biden.”
As for lies, it’s the same thing: all politicians lie. HRC sounds like a junior who doesn’t know all her lines for the school play, Biden repeats his lines so often it sounds like a Tourette’s sort of tic, a Tourette’s sort of tic.