You might have noticed a media narrative taking shape the last few days about how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign has “stalled.” A Politico Playbook item over the weekend described it as a “failure to launch,” noting that polling for DeSantis peaked in January at 40.5 percent and has since settled in the low 20s amid a barrage of attacks from former President Donald Trump.
Playbook also cited other news outlets recently casting doubt on the DeSantis operation, from fundraising struggles to lack of endorsements to difficulties distinguishing himself from Trump on policy. DeSantis super PAC official Steve Cortes added fuel to the narrative fire in an interview Sunday night, bemoaning the polls and admitting, “clearly Donald Trump is the runaway frontrunner.”
One could of course object that it’s only July, that polls don’t mean much this far out from the primaries, and that corporate media want nothing more than to push a DeSantis-is-stalled narrative whether it’s true or not, because they hate and fear him just as they hate and fear Trump.
But maybe there’s something else going on here. If enthusiasm for DeSantis seems lacking, maybe it has little or nothing to do with DeSantis or his campaign. Perhaps what we’re seeing is less about him and still less about 2024 or the upcoming GOP primary scrum, and more about what happened in 2020. Put bluntly, maybe what we’re seeing now is an early sign that what Democrats, Big Tech, and corporate media did in 2020 was inject poison
