Why the red tsunami in Florida?
Here’s a discussion. An excerpt [emphasis mine]:
Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, has surged to numbers never before reached in Florida. He and Rubio both won in Miami-Dade County, a huge liberal enclave in this state–where Rubio hails from, while not previously winning there. They did this by displaying tangible conservative leadership, giving the people a reason to vote for them. It is not a case of name recognition, but proven political delivery.
Look at what DeSantis faced throughout 2022, in terms of issues. He was battled by the Disney corporation. Then he was demonized in the press over a parental rights bill, as the news outlets colluded to call it a homophobic ‘Don’t Say Gay Bill.’ He was dubbed a racist over the flights of immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. The governor even absorbed criticism for his handling of Hurricane Ian – before the storm even made landfall. In each case, DeSantis held firm – and persevered…
The end result was a show of voter support…
I said it’s about leadership, he says it’s about leadership, but of course that’s a bit too simplistic. And I’m not sure it carries over to a national race, or to other states that aren’t Florida. But it certainly wouldn’t hurt.
In Florida, was it also the changing Hispanic vote? The tightening of the voting rules? The new arrivals determined to not repeat their old errors – or if they were already on the right, happy to be voting where their vote would finally count?
It’s not as though the MSM and the left didn’t try to get DeSantis. I had forgotten some of it until I read that article: don’t say gay, kidnapper, Bush-like hurricane enabler. It didn’t stick; it only made him stronger. Character matters, too, and he didn’t give them fuel for the fire in that regard.
It is instructive to look at exceptions, and Florida was an exception.
I also noticed this comment to a post at Althouse’s:
DeSantis barely won four years ago, yet governed as if he had been elected unanimously. He picks his fights carefully and has an extreme amount of personal and organizational discipline. He actively supports others on the down-ticket Republican “team,”down to the local school board level. As a consequence, he won yesterday the single most lopsided Republican victory in the state of Florida since Reconstruction.
I have very little doubt that a Republican presidential campaign run by DeSantis and his team would have a strategy to beat the Democrat campaign in every winnable state up to and including using mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, and early voting exactly as the Democrats use them.
Trump opened the door, but DeSantis is going to walk through that door.
That last sentence is way premature, of course. But I see the strengths that that commenter sees. And yes, of course DeSantis will be attacked relentlessly and unmercifully if he runs. In addition, we have no idea if he will run. But he’s a bright spot in a difficult time, as well as an instructive example.
as he reminded on tucker, he sent both the palm beach and broward election supervisors packing, then tightened up the voter rules, now florida has probably the same percentage of hispanics as arizona, maybe the demographics were different, arizona might have more college towns, I think the last governor of note was jan (las name escapes) she pushed for SB 10, maybe too much contamination from california,
The organization he built in Florida sounds like it can deliver the goods. Can he do the same in other states in the time we have? If so, great, but in other states he’ll be much more dependent on Swamp denizens.
I saw the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, interviewed a few weeks ago on Fox. He’s quite conservative and has been a supporter of law and order. The BLM riots were put down rather quickly and Miami has not become as crime ridden as many major U.S. cities. Add DeSantis changing of the election supervisors to the equation, and it appears that Miami citizens are happy with the government they have.
I wrote earlier, I think the response to the hurricane sealed the win for DeSantis. For all the naysaying and attempts to smear him; two brand new bridges in place and functioning in under a month’s time is definitely tangible signs of leadership. He probably would have won anyway, but the massive landslide, statewide win was because when Floridians needed their government, he gave them its best.
As for the campaign, I don’t know, but it seems at least as solid as Trump’s in 2016. He has a firebrand spokeswoman that’s not afraid to take on journalists. DeSantis knows how to canvas his voters. That’s like Trump’s campaign. But what I see from DeSantis more so than Trump is leadership standing behind the speaker. When Trump takes the stage, he wants it to be just him. When DeSantis takes the stage, he has first responders and members of local government standing with him. When DeSantis corrects journalist smears, such as inadequate emergency response for the hurricane, you have the heads of the emergency response team standing with DeSantis and nodding their agreement with his rebuke.
It’s not as though the MSM and the left didn’t try to get DeSantis. I had forgotten some of it until I read that article: don’t say gay, kidnapper, Bush-like hurricane enabler. It didn’t stick; …
I haven’t followed DeSantis with great attention, but I suspect it is true that one of the reasons these attacks didn’t stick is because he did a better job of following one of the cardinal Democrat campaigning rules. Always have a rapid response. How good that response is, is less important than it being rapid, forceful, and heard by many.
“Trump opened the door, but DeSantis is going to walk through that door.”
Reminds me of the story of how Moses led the freed Israelite slaves out of Egypt, but he was not allowed to lead them into the Promised Land.
Let’s hope it doesn’t take 40 years this time.
I voted Trump and still support him, but RDS is now the man
furthermore
https://tinyurl.com/3yyecyry
TommyJay…”“Trump opened the door, but DeSantis is going to walk through that door.” Reminds me of the story of how Moses led the freed Israelite slaves out of Egypt, but he was not allowed to lead them into the Promised Land.
Let’s hope it doesn’t take 40 years this time.”
Or for a another and more-current analogy…it’s not at all uncommon for the founder of a successful company to be required to step aside as CEO in factor of someone who is viewed as a better executive, if not as creative and visionary.
The 2020 was massive fraud, not a doubt in my mind, so there isn’t a chance this election was as pure as the driven snow. Mail fraud is to much a chance of vote fraud not to happen. The worse lock down governors all won, Shapiro will be Emperor Wolf, schools, businesses, jobs all took a serious hit yet everyone forgot it and is keeping the same rulers.
So it’s that or as I think fraud is a major part. Said for two years th ey hid it so well so they could do it again.
It is interesting to compare DeSantis to Newsom in California. Here in California despite the highest housing and gasoline prices in the country, rampant crime, drug addicts and the mentally ill overrunning all the major cities’ streets, the longest and most restrictive covid lockdowns and school shut downs in the country, etc. Newsom and the Democrats have won their usual super majority. What is the difference between California and Florida? It would seem like these two states are in different countries.
Bob, California and Florida have two different election systems. Florida’s system with no mail in ballots and single day voting is the old style, where enthusiasm is the key to winning elections. The goal is to select good candidates and support popular ideas that motivate people to stand in line to vote for you. The unmotivated will simply not vote so if you’re side has greater enthusiasm more of your voters show up and you win.
California has the new system with mail in ballots. In this system voter identity is what wins elections. The party doesn’t care about whether it’s voters are enthusiastic because it doesn’t need them to get to the polls. They send out harvesters to ensure a high rate of ballot return in areas and demographics that identify as Democrat because if you force these people to return a ballot it will almost always follow their party identity. In this system the key is to use social pressure to ensure people will never identify with the other party. This means no matter how bad the governance gets as long as you keep people thinking the other guys are Nazis you will win, because who self-identifies as a Nazi?
What is the difference between California and Florida? It would seem like these two states are in different countries.
Intelligence ?
I left CA 6 years ago and have not missed the chaos. Some of my kids are still there and we go over for holidays and birthdays.
I was a Trump voter and get 10 text messages a day from him or his outfit. I agree 2020 was stolen but it is time to get on with life. He seems stuck in a state of rage and resentment. Too bad. He did a great job in spite of all the opposition.
We have our own vote theft issues in Arizona but I still have hopes Kari Lake will fix them.
simple you want a festering dumpsterfire, see either coast, go with mail ballot, i think this was the essence of the motor voter law passed with cloward and piven’s approval, take out any form of verification, like voter id, and it spreads westward from illinois
btw it takes maximum cranial inversion, to look past the pyramid of dead and wounded in the windy city where lightfoot and pritzker are giving you the bear treatment in that decaprio film, and blame desantis,
The goal is to select good candidates and support popular ideas that motivate people to stand in line to vote for you.
Set up one precinct per 1,000 residents (the rule in New York when I was in local politics) and move the voting times to Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon, and you won’t have the queues. That these simple things were not done is an indictment of our state legislators.
to beat the Democrat campaign in every winnable state up to and including using mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, and early voting exactly as the Democrats use them.
Don’t know about that. Would he have as much access to local caches of dead voters on the rolls as the Dems have cultivated over recent decades? Necessary for late-delivery ‘surprise’ vote-bombs. At least the sports pages could coo and quiver about the sudden ‘unexpected’ vote deliveries by both parties, instead of the current one-sided midnight bumps.
It’s not as though the MSM and the left didn’t try to get DeSantis. I had forgotten some of it until I read that article:
This is the problem. People forget the good and are bombarded with the bad.
I hope in two years, voters are reminded of the missed funerals, arrests for not wearing a mask, no church in person, elderly infected in nursing homes, etc.
DeSantis has a weapon that the Democrats and media seldom face. He fights. He is prepared and is a very effective counter puncher; and I think it throws them off balance.
Trump did that as well; unfortunately, Trump’s personality got in his way. The old adage, “don’t shoot yourself in the foot, could have been coined with Trump in mind”. DeSantis seldom lets things get personal. He is fighting on a different level.
BTW, I read an article somewhere, don’t remember where, reporting that DeSantis’s closest adviser is his wife. She has a voice on every issue. Trump tried to make that a negative in one of his gratuitous insults of the past few days; apparently forgetting the role that Ivanka played in his campaigns/administration. In addition to policy consultation, Casey DeSantis’s background in TV News affords comfort as a public voice; and she has schooled him in the art. They reportedly have a very tight circle of confidants. I don’t expect spurious leaks or backstabbing. That would be refreshing.
I wonder whether the Florida results are the uniparty at work behind the scenes.
Several weeks before the elections the Dems withdrew money from their Florida candidates — and this could also mean they quietly withdrew the money earmarked for post-election fraud (fake votes cost money too). Hence the Dem strongholds in Florida behaved, making Desantis look like a Republican demigod and setting him up to be a “Trump killler”.
At that time media everywhere played this as due to bad polls, but is Florida really that out of step with other states?
Also Desantis looks impressive because he seems to have kept Biden’s federal observers out, but if the feds had really wanted to be present they would be — this issue was settled some time ago in the civil war. This whole story looks like more Kabuki theater to make Desantis look good.
The feds were in fact sent to Nevada and Arizona, and the election results there are delayed while fake votes are manufactured. After enough of them have been “found”, the fed observers will let us know that despite appearances the elections were “clean”.
It will be hard to elect Desantis president until he learns to support his voice properly from the diaphragm and lower abdomen. Desantis’s voice habitually comes from the chest and throat, often making his face look red and his voice sound whiney and beta.
The current Senate minority leader, of course, doesn’t care who is president as long as it is someone whose DOJ and FBI will look away from the influence of his chinese wife on American policy. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many of the other Republican never-Trumpers are people with minor-league Hunter Biden types lurking in their background.
I dont think so
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/los-angeles-mayoral-race-bass-narrows-carusos-lead-to-around-2000-votes/ar-AA13ZOZI
He is the no 1 opponent of lockdowns vaccine mamdates voter fraud et al whu not take him down if you are able
Gut Feeling – no proof…
A lot of Democrat’s election fraud is done because everyone knows there are no consequences.
DeSantis in Florida changed that. I wish more states were this way.
Some good news. Hope it’s an omen for the Senate but they’re still counting/manufacturing votes in Clark County.
Many news organizations project the Republican Lombardo to defeat the Democrat Sisolak including Fox
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nevada-republican-joe-lombardo-defeats-incumbent-democrat-steve-sisolak-gubernatorial-election
Linked from Powerline – they all sound reasonable, but it probably takes all of them operating to be successful.
https://www.city-journal.org/ron-desantis-rules-for-political-success
“He [DeSantis] has a firebrand spokeswoman that’s not afraid to take on journalists.”
That’s what most presidential candidates do, they have an attack dog to speak out (think of Agnew for Nixon) while they remain above it all and, uh, “Presidential”. Trump is his own attack dog which is sometimes endearing but often maddening and it has cost him support. I don’t want to put all the blame on Don because the media has been so ruthlessly dishonest about him (Charlottesville etc etc etc) but he leaves himself exposed.
miguel, I loved it in the article you linked where it said they are “sifting” through mail-in ballots. I guess they want to make sure they count the right ones. Actually left ones.
Pretty certain Laxalt is going to lose the Nevada race. They are stealing right out in the open.
I also think they intend to steal as many of the California seats from the Republican’s leading their districts. There is a real chance that after Warnock wins in Georgia next month that the Democrats will control both houses of Congress.
I can only see 5 reasonably sure wins for the GOP in the remaining races for the House, but even a 8 point lead in California is surmountable for the Democrats. This right here is why they take days to count the last 20% of the vote- they need the time to gather up enough ballots to overcome the margin they can reasonably predict, and they don’t want to have to drop the entire load at the end because it is too suspicious. It is also why Arizona suddenly could count a damned thing early Wednesday afternoon- both Lake and Masters were making up too much ground far too quickly, so they slow down the count and scrounge for ballots.
Art Deco (6:11 pm) suggested we “move the voting times to Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon, . . . .”
Good suggestion, but we’ll need to remember to make accommodation for certain flavors of Jewish voters.
Isn’t it interesting, all these delayed vote counts in blue districts with come-from-behind Cinderella-story razor-thin Democrat wins. Ye$$ir! The$e win$ are all a big My$tery! No analyses so far on District makeup vs. candidate vote counts vs. time.
https://twitter.com/DecisionDeskHQ
The so-called Hispanic vote in Florida signifies nothing.
The Hispanics in Florida are Cubans, descendants of the refugees from Castro’s revolution, and strongly anti-communist.
Hispanics is a very bad term that disguises the fact that there are several ethnic groups with very different cultures and politics among people with Spanish surnames. Cubans, Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, all know who they are and how the differ from each other.
The word Hispanic is so wrong that people with actual Spanish and Portuguese ancestry are not Hispanic by law and regulation. Even if their citizenship is from Latin America, white Spaniards and Portuguese and not counted as Hispanic. You must have some Indio or African ancestry.
Good suggestion, but we’ll need to remember to make accommodation for certain flavors of Jewish voters.
There are about 500,000 Orthodox Jews in the United States.
The Hispanics in Florida are Cubans, descendants of the refugees from Castro’s revolution, and strongly anti-communist.
The actual distribution of Florida hispanics by origin is as follows:
30.0%: Cuban
21.4%: Puerto Rican
14.7%: Mexican
7.5%: Colombian
4.4%: Dominican
3.4%: Nicaraguan
2.8%: Honduran
2.8%: Venezuelan
2.7%: Peruvian
2.2%: Guatemalan
1.2%: Castillan
4.2%: South American, other
2.7%: Central American, other
Hispanics is a very bad term
It’s a generic, pest.
The pjmedia article had the discredited 2020 election fraud in the article.
From a supposedly conservative outlet.
I bet most of their readers believe fraud had a big impact.
Perhaps it due to the fear of google shadow-banning the article.
D. Cohen, are you suggesting that DeSantis is a Stalking Horse for the Democrats against Trump?
If you are that borders on foolishness. Trump has fatally wounded himself politically. Only he and relatively few others don’t recognize that. It used to be said that only the GOP establishment, RINOS and Dems opposed Trump. Now, significant numbers of authentic Conservatives are turning away from him. The Democrats would love nothing better than to face him in 2024.
Although my opinion counts for nothing, it may be illustrative. I supported Trump through his Presidency and for some time after. I began to waiver as his bitterness seemed to just grow and becme nearly all consuming. All he talked about was how great he had been, and how the elections were stolen. Ok. We know. We have heard it all many times. How about working within the party to institute meaningful reforms at the grass root level? How about working to unite the party? He lost me completely with his actions during these mid-terms. He attacked GOP candidates, including DeSantis; and even publicly blamed Melania for some of his own poor choices. His recent actions are bordering on the bizarre; I assume that I would vote for Trump in ’24 in the unlikely event he survived the Primaries, but with no enthusiasm.
On the other hand, give one shred of evidence that DeSantis is not authentic.
Interesting that Florida is now considered a poster child on many levels for how a Conservative led state can function. Before DeSantis it was trending in the opposite direction.
If I misunderstood your intent, I apologize.
The thing that surprised me is that the refugees from NYState and other Yankeeland locales seemed to have learned enough that following their former voting patterns was…harmful.
And changed that pattern.
“Trump has fatally wounded himself politically.” – Oldflyer
No, the deep state, Democrat party, fake media may have fatally wounded him.
Since we’re now requiring loyalty pledges, I’ll certainly vote for DeSantis if he’s the nominee, will you vote for Trump if he’s the nominee? Reagan’s 11th amendment was trashed in 2016, when the GOPe joined forces with the left to try and defeat President Trump. A couple of troll-like posts on Truth Social and suddenly there’s an outbreak of the vapors. Let’s suppose President Trump hadn’t posted those “nasty” comments about DeSantis and Youngkin. In the same time period the media would have continued to make up stories about Trump. The only difference is the conservative media jumping on the story. I get it. Lots of Republicans don’t like Trump.
I understand this is how politics works. If Governor DeSantis decides to run, it will be a divisive primary. But it won’t be the first.
When President Trump announces his candidacy– whether on the 15th or after the Georgia election, it will likely prompt the Democrats to cast their fate with Biden. (If he does announce on the 15th, it will not affect the election in Georgia. The leftist media doesn’t need a reason to defame Trump and the deplorables.)
President Trump legitimately got 74 million votes in 2020. How many of Biden’s 81 million were legitimate? In spite of those numbers President Trump actually lost by 276,000 votes. How many of those were illegitimate from election workers ignoring state laws, excess ballots flooding some states, ineligible voters voting anyway, etc.
DeSantis supporters (or any other candidates that run) need to convince people sticking with Trump that he can’t get the same number of votes in those swing states.
Or Trump for Secretary of State. His was the first sane America centric foreign policy in decades.
I’m being irritable. I’m going to leave this comment up, but it’s not intended as an attack on you.
Good election security, good governance, and a lot of refugees from Cuba, Venezuela, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
Plus, Charlie Crist. Party swappers usually don’t make anybody happy, and that’s just the start.
Although it does have some mail-in voting, Florida does not have the Wild West, wide open voting system that states like Michigan and Pennsylvania do. If the latter 2 states were like Florida, Whitmer, Fetterman and Shapiro all would have lost.
To oldflyer,
I live in Florida, and during the midterms, all the local media had stories about the Democrats withdrawing monetary support from their candidates for senator and governor. This was said to be due to their weakness in the polls. In that case it would also make sense for the Democrats to cut their budget for “delayed” vote counting in their Dade and Broward strongholds — in effect giving up the entire state to the Republicans. This would make DeSantis look good because it creates an impressive Republican sweep with no headlines about problems with counting the vote. It also creates difficulties for Trump because it builds up DeSantis among Republicans.
DeSantis had nothing to do with this, any more than Trump in 2016 had anything to do with the Democrats pushing him in the primaries because they thought he would be the easiest Republican for Hillary to beat. I have also read that Kari Lake in Arizona had Democrats contributing money to her primary campaign because she was thought to be the easiest to beat. For the Democrats to use their money to mess with Republican primaries and promote the candidates they prefer to run against is a matter of record — it’s how they roll. Is it really so unthinkable that they would also do this sort of thing in the Florida midterm elections to set up the 2024 presidential election the way they want?
Note also that if DeSantis runs for president, then Florida goes back to being a purple state. Just because many people in the right-wing media are bored with writing about Trump doesn’t make me eager to have someone like Gillum become Florida’s governor. (Gillum, who came uncomfortably close to beating Desantis in the last race for Florida’s governor, was — a few months after he lost — found passed out in a hotel room with a male prostitute and a bag of coke. This is the sort of person Democrats in Florida pick to run for governor).
Why would Democrats prefer to run against DeSantis rather than Trump? Well, he doesn’t project well when speaking (definitely not one of Trump’s problems). We pay little attention to this sort of thing when voting, but there are many low-information voters who take a quick look at the candidates’ TV presence and then choose. The Republicans in Florida have had an impressive majority in the state legislature for a while now, which means that DeSantis really has little experience dealing with a hostile legislature and a hostile government bureaucracy. Running DeSantis for president would not solve the problems of our messed up elections.
In a more hopeful note, Democrats can be wrong about how their machinations ultimately turn out — like with Trump in 2016.
D. Cohen:
Au contraire; I think DeSantis is the Democrats’ worst nightmare at this point. They would dearly LOVE to run against Trump – although they may indict him first (Trump-detesting Andy McCarthy seems to think that will happen, and he certainly might be correct).
Neo, if the Democrats are so eager to run against Trump, why would they try to indict him? Indicting him makes it less likely he will be the Republican nominee in 2024. The more delay in counting the vote in Arizona, Nevada, and in all those too-close-to-call House races, the more correct Trump seems to be in calling foul about the way we run elections, making him a very worrying candidate for the Democrats in 2024.
DeSantis is just a solid Republican governor in a state where the Republicans have controlled the state legislature and court system for years. His talent — not a small one by any means — was seeing through the Covid panic in 2020 and 2021. But that will seem like very old news two years from now.
Trump getting elected president without having run for any other office is a much more impressive accomplishment and I bet it still has the political establishment spooked. They don’t know how he did it, they know that none of them could have done it, and they are still afraid of him. That is why they would prefer to have DeSantis be the Republican nominee in 2024. DeSantis they understand.
D. Cohen:
As I said, they would like nothing better than to run against Trump EXCEPT indicting him, as well as his family. It’s like having two wonderful desserts from which to choose. Would you like the 7-layer chocolate cake, or the double rich chocolate mousse? Ah, if only there was a dessert buffet and you could have both!
No one on the other side is spooked by Trump anymore. He has cooked his own goose after the 2020 election, I’m afraid. He is showing poor judgment. His die-hard supporters will not desert him, but the people who came onboard will. He cannot survive politically without them.
I have never understood people who don’t think Democrats are tactically and strategically smart. They are.
It’s not that DeSantis is a shoe-in either, were he the 2024 nominee. Democrats know how to destroy people. But Trump destroyed himself.
That is my firm belief from what I observe. It would take a great deal to reverse that opinion. My sense is that Trump is panicked; I’ve described him as a tragic Shakespearean figure and I mean it. I’m not demeaning him. I think he was a great president with tragic flaws within himself, flaws that are probably connected with the things that also made him great.
Oh, and you write, “DeSantis is just a solid Republican governor in a state where the Republicans have controlled the state legislature and court system for years”. Trump said something of the sort – that DeSantis was an “average” governor. Obviously, a governor of any party can’t do much without a legislature to match, and DeSantis had that. But he barely won his 2018 election and yet now is a powerhouse in Florida. He did much more than his COVID response, too, including legislation about education as well as election rules, hurricane management, taking on Disney, and even increasing the GOP domination of the legislature in a year when that was not the trend in other states. He stood up to personal attacks in a commendable and tough manner, and did it with intelligence and flair.
More here.