Why DeSantis is losing the Republican primary to Trump

Consider for a moment what Donald Trump gives his average follower. Membership in a massive nationwide dialogue of like-minded people. A paternal figure in a confusing world. Crime Bustle: Middle-aged whites don’t often play the role of rebel in life.

Besides all that, what is the marginal benefit of seeing him win an actual election? After that, what is the marginal benefit of seeing their policies implemented? There’s no doubt that Trump fans wouldn’t rather have these bonus items. But before this ever happens, he has done them a deeply emotional and almost spiritual service.

It’s not clear that Ron DeSantis understands this about populism. Until he does, he will not displace Trump as the leader of the movement in America. Florida governors base their business on their elected qualifications and administrative capacity. But if any of these things were paramount to voters in the Republican primary, the contest would already be over.

Trump lost the midterm elections in 2018. He lost the presidential election in 2020. He is the only President in the country’s 80-year history Gallup approval-ratings poll Never score 50%. Republican candidates bearing his stamp have a mixed electoral record at best. Even allowing for the widespread and erroneous belief that he was shut out of a second term, there must be plenty of Trump fans who know, deep down, that DeSantis or Nikki Haley will be among national voters in 2024. Will perform better together. No problem. Nor does it give them the sense of being tribal that it does. Nor does it bother liberals that much.

The governor’s other boast – his executive clout – counts for even less. Just because liberals have always feared the emergence of an efficient democracy doesn’t mean populist voters yearn for it to the same extent. How much base did Trump lose after failing to build that wall on the Mexican border? How much of this has Joe Biden to thank for passing the biggest protectionist bill in memory?

DeSantis is the logical, poor man. he thinks modern politics is about doing things. The extent to which this is about belonging – about replacing the group identity that people once had with church or trade union – is lost on his argumentative Kane. In this sense he thinks like a liberal. The Left is always trying to “answer” populist concerns by restoring industrial jobs or evading power. It’s too sweet. And yes, perhaps in the beginning populism was about concrete grievances. But once people took sides, around 2016, membership in that group started to matter more to them. (As in a prolonged war whose root cause is lost on the belligerents.) Trump seems to believe this more clearly than his rivals.

DeSantis believes that politics is in the flux of culture, that culture is shaped in institutions, that conservatives have ceded those institutions to the organized left. Gramsci of Tallahassee doesn’t just diagnose the problem. She is creative and stubborn in establishing a right-wing counter-hegemony. Ask Disney. Ask Florida’s educational bureaucracy.

This is far more thought and action than Trump. This is also very beside the point. I’m no longer sure that populist voters want to win the culture war. Just being in it gives them meaning. If anything, there is more collective identity in defeat, more solidarity under siege than in victory. If I’m right, none of the governor’s arguments against Trump — his election vendetta, his boredom with expansion — are half as convincing as they seem.

DeSantis is a case study in the Vibes theory of politics. It doesn’t matter that he is an honest and effective populist. He “presents” as a creature of the establishment. It has something to do with the Ivy League and Navy past, the stiff style of speech, the apparent frankness (no sexual or financial scandals) and the lack of visual hook in all the neat hair and cool tailoring. His record as leader of a large state also counts against him. No populist worth his name would be reading his brief and implementing the ideas with such bureaucratic patience. “Nerrrrrrd,” you can imagine Trump yelling at her, à la Homer Simpson, in a TV debate studio.

Therefore, a hardline right-winger from a background farther distant than Trump has been framed as if he were the latest scion of the Bush clan. He can console himself that he is in illustrious company. Rishi Sunak supported Brexit before Boris Johnson. They subsidized people to eat out during a viral pandemic for which there was no vaccine. His reputation among populists? Will help.

janan.ganesh@ft.com