“But if you run for president, you have to start talking about your views on national policy issues.” True, but the fact that the GOP didn’t even bother to update their party platform in 2020 suggests they’re not entirely on board with this idea.
Platforms are terrible documents because they lay out views on far too many issues. It's much more reasonable to have positions on a handful of issues and basic governing values. Allowing diversity of thought on non-core issues allows a bigger tent. Given the party platforms I've read, no document is indeed better.
Candidates should have richer position statements than parties, especially on emerging issues. Having DeSantis and Trump should have room to disagree on policy, and less platform allows for that.
I agree, but then I'm a policy person who loves digging into that kind of stuff.
More realistically, the number of people who are actually influenced by the party platform has got to be incredibly low. Almost everyone who reads it is likely already an incredibly knowledgeable partisan who isn't going to change their vote.
Just feels like the tip of the iceberg though. A party that can’t be bothered to do it also just doesn’t place a high priority on having any sort of policy strategy whatsoever.
I agree - though I would say that platforms are in a middle spot that is the worst of both worlds. The could either be as position papers or they could be an outline of general principles without specific policy positions. They end up being a mix with most of the disadvantages of both and few of the advantages of either.
If they were written as bland documents explaining positions and how they prioritized those positions relative to each other, then that would be useful.
They are documents written by far too many contributors, designed to placate one team’s various activist groups. Who engages in fraught tug-of-war matches to get just the right language in a document that always turns out to be meaningless.
I agree with this. I would go further and say that many positions are only there to placate a minor interest group and are not necessarily representative of the policy agenda.
Fair, but at the same time how much pressure was there on Obama to really discuss national policy issues when he ran in 2012? I think unless there's an active war Presidents typically get a pass on actually saying much of substance when running for reelection.
It’s true that the candidate doesn’t personally have to say much of substance. But it’s still traditional for the party to write a platform document. And in 2020, because of COVID, the republicans chose not to. Or rather they did, but it was something like one sentence long and it said “everything Trump says is right”.
Yes, I'm very well aware that it's normal to write a platform for a second term, thanks. The point is how often does a President get meaningfully questioned about it outside the scope of dealing with an active war?
I mean, 2012 isn’t that long ago. I remember the ACA coming up once or twice in that campaign. Not to mention tax policy, Supreme Court appointment, views about the relative threat posed by Russia and China. The political spin was crude and basic, but I think voters accurately understood that Romney was a lot more likely to want to cut taxes at the top and cut entitlement spending - not least because of the extremely conservative veep he selected.
"He guessed that most economists were wrong, that the 2016 economy was not at full employment, and that it would be fine to raise domestic spending and raise military spending and cut taxes. And he was right."
Matt has consistently given Trump way too much credit on this point. Trump doesn't even know what full employment is. His thought process was at most something like: "people like tax cuts and spending, let's do both and pretend it'll be deficit neutral anyway". Bonus points if he actually believed it would be deficit neutral.
The White House is not just the President. Policy can be guided by smart, well-informed advisors to the President, which in Trump's case means we have to look at how policy was shaped by Steve Mnuchin, Peter Navarro . . . I'm sorry but I can't stop giggling . . . never mind.
I agree that Trump seems mostly unconcerned with technocratic policy tradeoffs, but I think there needs to be a limiting principle on how we meter out credit for "sound" policy choices and lucky guesses. I never see the same skepticism in regards to Obama on Syria, Biden on the ARP, etc and it seems uncharitable to unilaterally shit on Trump because he's kind of incoherent in public discourse. I think a lot of foreign policy, macroeconomic choices that politicians make are more unpredictable than we let on sometimes.
I don't know what Ron DeSantis would do as President, and neither does anyone else. I do know he has done a very good job as Governor in Florida. I suspect those who criticize him (from left and right) by pointing out that he lacks charisma and an outsized personality are really just hoping for another Trump run. I think his generally boring public persona is a positive.
Being President isn't just like being Governor, but a Governor is the closest thing our system has to a similar job. If he runs, I hope people will look to actual results and not the dishonest version of Florida that was described during the COVID-era.
Refusal to expand Medicaid should be disqualifying. I loved Kemp’s COVID policies but stuck with Abrams because of medicaid expansion and marijuana legalization.
Did I say she's as bad as Trump? No. But she refused to concede a legal election result, throwing around completely baseless allegations which she never took back or apologized for even after being thrown out of court. If we believe in democracy, and in having responsible leaders who help ensure people's trust in democracy, not cynically throw about destructive conspiracy theories, then we can't simply condemn reckless behavior only when it's done by other side, or give our side a pass just because the other side* is worse. On the contrary, now more than ever we cannot afford to engage in this behavior or to tolerate it. Put your money and votes where your mouth is.
*and to be clear, while the GOP is by far the worse actor nationally, in Georgia's gubernatorial specifically "the other side" is not worse on democracy but demonstrably *better.* If you cant' acknowledge Kemp's adherence to democratic norms your accusations of actual GOP bad actors rings hollow.
I voted for Abrams again because I oppose Kemp's record on guns, Medicaid and abortion, but I was uncomfortable with how she handled the 2018 loss and I wasn't exactly sad to see her lose this time.
Are you sure you're on the right Substack? One of Matt's core beliefs is in a "more expansive federal welfare state", and that belief is likely shared by most everyone on here, even if they disagree on exactly *how* expansive it should be or what form it should take.
"...that belief is likely shared by most everyone on here..."
Yes. And most of them seem decent, sincere, reasonable, and smart. Sometimes people who hold different opinions from mine are all of those things. Sometimes they have a wicked sense of humor, too.
I'm sure others have mentioned this and it's not under your control, but Substack shouldn't show you as the "author" on a piece Matt wrote. Very confusing.
From a political saviness perspective I also appreciated HOW DeSantis raised teacher rates. He raised salaries of junior teachers more than those with longer tenure. This made the teacher unions very angry but it would have been too petty for them to make a big stink out of it.
I think the reason people don't focus on asking DeSantis questions like this is that it doesn't really matter. Everyone knows that he'll do and support whatever the prevailing winds are in the Republican Party at the time, calibrated by general public opinion polls. Unlike Trump, DeSantis isn't a charismatic or large enough figure to set the agenda in the Republican Party, just to put his finger in the wind and follow it, Rubio style. So it's not very informative to ask him really specific policy questions like this.
My sense is that RDS is first and foremost a craven politician in the Rubio / Cruz mold, which admittedly gets you a long ways, but I think you run into a wall at a certain point. Trump’s pathological narcissism made him in some ways a very brave politician, in terms of taking positions, and I think that lends a certain charisma, if you can sell it.
As best I can tell, Biden is exactly this! Biden's political views have been described as finding the center of the Democratic party and governing from there. As Matt described yesterday, he has been restrained the last two years by razor small majorities and Manchin - to his benefit!
I think the most meaningful question we probably will ask any of these candidates is what they will push for if they get a majority in the house and win 54 senate seats. Will they push to abolish the filibuster? If yes, then their governing agenda is going to be much more radical.
I understand your point but think you're way overstating it. Name the candidates whose answers to questions like these during primary elections have meaningfully changed the course of their party's policy agenda. I bet you can count them on one hand, aggregate for both parties over at least the last quarter century.
I think Elizabeth Warren in 2020, and Bernie Sanders in 2016, had a major influence on how Democratic politicians set their policies. I think in 2008, both Clinton and Obama basically collaboratively wrote a set of policies, with the only substantive difference being that Obama opposed the individual mandate for health insurance. John Edwards had effects on policy ideas in 2004.
Trump. He promised to protect social security and Medicare and to blow up stupid trade deals, and he’s moved the needle of Republican politics more than anyone since Nixon.
Ron DeSantis positions do not matter. Voters are not making decisions based on policy, especially during the primaries. Ron DeSantis needs to run, like Trump did, on vibes. Trump's vibes were negative and revanchist and suited a certain malaise that Hillary Clinton seemed to inspire in anyone who's not a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.
DeSantis' vibes will be different and, I think, he can run a more positive message of, more or less, freedom. He should create (to some extent fabricate or exaggerate) something called "The Florida Miracle" and hammer it again and again to make sure everyone knows that Desantis is responsible for the Florida having the best time ever. He should run on a record of seemingly unprecedented success. I think I've posted something like this before but the push is:
- What MY said about school pay, the quite high NAEP scores for 4th grade, and the effort to empower parents and disempower educational bureaucrats and ideologues
- Breaking the back of higher ed and the woke professors by empowering state bureaucrats to muzzle, penalize, and fire people with incorrect opinions. Put Ben Sasse out there as a surrogate to highlight all the amazing stuff the U of F does and how woke higher ed threatens technological/economic progress
- Trott out some of those hand-crafted numbers about how Florida is one of the best states to do business, point to high employment rates, low taxes, etc
- Woke capitalism is a dead end, and DeSantis is the harbinger of that end. Business should be business (see above) and the state shouldn't be subsidizing companies through tax breaks when they don't support the people of Florida
- Massive population growth proves how amazing Florida is and shows the success of its policies
- Show that RDS is a bipartisan figure and will work with Democrats when the issues are right. Show lots of pictures with Biden and highlight hurricane relief efforts and how you led the (by 2024) amazing recovery of southwest Florida from Ian
You get the point. None of these are "true" so much as they are the kind of "facts" that most people will just believe at first glance. No amound of Vox explainers about how bad Florida's schools are or how its lopsided demographics are a huge drag on the economy etc etc will change anything. Doesn't matter. Nobody important will read it, certainly not primary voters.
Run on the good vibes generated by the Florida Miracle.
> Voters are not making decisions based on policy, especially during the primaries.
The fact that Charlie Baker got elected governor and Geoff Diehl didn't (and that Baker might not have even won the GOP primary) clearly has something to do with their views on policy.
Sure, but can you say that Massachusetts voters are more indicative of average American voters than Florida voters are?
And I'm not sure Barker sees it that way. He's going around pointing the finger at extremism as the reason for GOP failures in the midterms but look at what he says about it - it's not policy: "They [he's talking about voters] want people who they believe are going to be reasonable, who are going to be collaborative, and who represent a fundamental tenet of democracy that it's supposed to be a distributed decision-making model, and you're supposed to be OK with."
I mean wasn’t it the pitch for Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and GWB? Reagan’s campaign was before my time but I remember quite a lot of it in 92 and 00.
Not so much Reagan but perhaps an argument for Clinton and GWB. But I don't think their records mattered that much in the primaries, which is more my point.
Re - point 3 ... Hadn't thought about until just now but the founders of three of Chicago's latest big exits ($100m+) all moved their families to Miami. Not sure if this is a broader trend - but they didn't stay here and they didn't move to Cali.
Right. And it doesn't matter if it's a trend or not. What matters is that DeSantis can plausibly say it's indicative of Florida's super-duper awesome business paradise. Who wouldn't want the Florida Miracle to be spread nationwide?
Could it be that DeSantis is just a pragmatic politician with a fair amount of flexibility on policy positions? (Some might say machiavellian.) Reading through this history of his political career, it seems like he is just following the Republican party’s hectic evolution without any noteworthy dissent.
Like many Republicans, including Trump, DeSantis likely favors tax cuts for the rich. And like Trump, he may evade explicitly stating that policy position should he run for president. Even in debates with the Democratic candidate, DeSantis could deflect when pressed on that specific issue.
Trump himself didn’t seem to pay much of a price for his tax cuts for the rich in the 2020 presidential election. It could be because Trump was defined by numerous other issues of higher salience. DeSantis could similarly avoid making this an issue in the 2024 election by leaning into non-fiscal issues, like immigration and culture war stuff.
Weirdly, this sort of describes a Republican version of Joe Biden who was sort of the median Democratic Senator for 36 years.
Now, the median of the Trump Republican party is semi-crazy, so if he runs I expect him to try to sell himself as just the professionalized version of Trump.
It's funny because you mentioned neither of the things that come to mind when I think of DeSantis: (1) his shtick of using government to "own the libs" at whatever cost (think: picking a fight with Disney over their corporate-friendly LGBTQ stance) and (2) the Martha's Vineyard immigration stunt. A lot of this plays well in conservative media, but once DeSantis gets on a national stage, he may end up being "Trump without the charm" as I've heard him described. Probably my own personal bias here talking, but #2 could end up really hurting him... these were mostly Venezuelans, who should be one of the most sympathetic groups of asylum seekers to conservatives! All he'd have to do is say, "This terribly run socialist government destroyed these people's lives to want to come seek refuge in our pro-business country," and they'd be eating it up.
Also, I don't think people realize just how terrible shape the Florida Democratic Party is in right now. They had to recruit Charlie Crist, of all people, to run as their gubernatorial candidate, and they actually thought this was a good idea!
>>but #2 could end up really hurting him... these were mostly Venezuelans, who should be one of the most sympathetic groups of asylum seekers to conservatives!<<
Sure didn't hurt him last week with Hispanic voters in his own state.
True. But two notes on that: (1) Cubans have never voted like other Latinos (not that any Latino groups are monolithic, but that's another story) and tend to think of their situation as unique (and it is!). And (2) Charlie Crist was a terrible candidate. You've got to give voters a good alternative, and Florida Dems most likely certainly did not.
Latinos don’t just inherently sympathize with undocumented immigrants! I think the recent LA city council controversy highlighted why that might be - the Venezuelans who left 10 years ago might be different than the ones leaving now, just like people from wealthy parts of Mexico don’t inherently sympathize with people from poor parts of Mexico. The flattening of racism to “whiteness” has really limited Democrats’ ability to understand the complexity of identity issues, when in reality Latinos from different backgrounds can be racist against each other in the same way different types of white Europeans are often racist against each other (less common in the US, but racism against Eastern Europeans was a big driver of Brexit).
“ Amid all the controversy, Florida Hispanics side with the governor on the Martha’s Vineyard flight, with 50% in favor and 43% opposed to the relocation, according to the poll. Independents joined Republicans in lending majority support to the governor on the issue while Democrats were opposed.
Support for DeSantis’ migrant relocation move was strongest among Hispanic immigrants. Those born outside the United States favored the policy by 52% to 41%, according to the poll. Those born in the United States were almost equally divided, with 49% in favor and 45% opposed.”
Haven't seen the exit polls, but very well could be. Agree with Mark below, and this is a separate issue for the "demographics is destiny" believers who are in for a rude awakening on this topic.
Regarding (2), Demings appeared to be a decent candidate--or at least a much better one than Crist--and performed as poorly against Rubio, one of the most transparently craven and insubstantial politicians around today. It just seems to me that Florida has become a significantly more conservative/Republican state in the last 25 years or so, and that Hispanic voters have not been immune to that trend.
No doubt about that. Although DeSantis and Rick Scott both won in 2018 by less than 1%... I find it to believe that Florida swung that much to the right in just four years. More conservative for sure, but a lot of the blame has to fall on the Dems organization. They lost Miami-Dade! That would've been unheard of even four years ago.
That’s a good point but here’s my guess : 1. 2018 was peak blue wave and red *still* won in fl. 2022 nationally was bluer than expected but not like 2018
2. RDS has incumbency advantage with down ballot effects
3. 4 years is not nothing, the state’s baseline can definitely shift in non negligible ways, and 4 years that include COVID era is probably equivalent to something like 8 years of pre COVID times , so the state is actually much redder than 2018 and it may have already been quite redder 2018 in ways the blue wave masked (#1 above)
4.as you say dem organization on the state may have been lousy but I’d wager factors 1-3 were more important
"It's funny because you mentioned neither of the things that come to mind when I think of DeSantis: (1) his shtick of using government to "own the libs" at whatever cost (think: picking a fight with Disney over their corporate-friendly LGBTQ stance) and (2) the Martha's Vineyard immigration stunt."
You're kind of proving Matt's point here. The point of this post is that for all of the news coverage and hype DeSantis has received as a result of these types of stunts, there has been very little coverage on kinds of positions he would take on boring but important Federal policy issues.
I think that's how traditional patriotic Americans would see it. There used to be a saying: "If we don't like your government, then we'll like your refugees."
But Republicans have shown that's no longer the case for many of them. They seem to dislike Venezuela and dislike Venezuelan asylum seekers and are totally unbothered by the contradiction.
If DeSantis runs for president in 2024, I don’t think his policy positions will be that important. Instead, his fight with Trump in the Republican primary will be the defining feature. And even if DeSantis wins the nomination, he’ll still have to contend with a vengeful Trump; a Trump who could run a third party spoiler campaign or at least instruct his supporters to refrain from voting in the general election.
Unless Trump is in jail, otherwise barred from office, or his heart finally gives out, I don’t see how DeSantis or any other non-Trump candidate could win the general election.
Trump losing primaries and angrly breaking apart the gop with his own party and alternative slate of candidates seems like the best case scenario for 2024 (I think). Might be the only way for Dems to win with trifecta! Also the most likely way the dem gop duopoly could be broken (at least temporarily).
>>Unless Trump is in jail, otherwise barred from office,<<
How can he Trump be barred from office? The votes don't exist in Congress (14th amendment solution; and even if the votes could be found it's not clear the Supreme Court would allow this), and the constitution doesn't prohibit a convicted and even incarcerated felon from running for president. Hell, he could run the country from Alcatraz as far as I know.
I had never voted Republican in my life and I became a huge DeSantis fan during COVID. Our family suffered so much under our Dem governor’s COVID policies and I loved how DeSantis didn’t give in to the global mob panic about staying closed and instead looked to Europe and other experts and read studies and looked at the data. I was doing that too and coming to the same conclusions as DeSantis. Yet the hapless school boards and town councils in my state were not, and our governor was doing nothing to convince them to open. I voted Repub for first time in my life as a pure backlash to COVID policies in 2021. I went back to Dem in last week’s midterms. But in 2024, if DeSantis is on the ballot, it’s going to be very hard for me to resist voting for him.
Also, I was in Florida in spring of 2021 and there was just as much of a rush to get vaccines as there was in my home state, this idea that RD did anything to prevent vaccines is ridic.
I'm sorry, you can't ignore the fact he put Joseph Ledapo up as Surgeon General and then keep on board after re-election and tell me you have someone committed to sane COVID policies. Ladopo is, in layman's terms, a nut. He should be nowhere near making any sort of medical or health care policy for a state. To not just hire him but keep on board is a GIANT mark against any defense you want to have of RDS covid policies. I really can't emphasize enough that keeping Ladopo is a giant sign that he's NOT actually reading the research out of Europe, but instead trying to keep in the good graces of GOP primary voters over looking out for what's best for his state.
I'll add in the "who you hire should count for something in evaluating your performance" category that having Christina Pushaw as part of your team is also a giant mark against you. There are a number of things to say about her that would be disqualifying but right near the top of the list has to be smearing gay people as "groomers" (https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1499890719691051008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw). And this is especially relevant given her job as a rapid-response director! Whatever commentary you want to say in support of the "Don't say gay" bill, characterizing the bill the way she does is beyond repulsive.
Keeping these two people in positions of authority has to be considered in any evaluation of RDS.
If Matt's suspicion is right, that DeSantis is a Ryan style Republican in a bit of Trump's clothing then I think his fortunes will diminish.
The big threat is the #1 scenario. If he can position himself as a serious, anti-woke/left wing cultural craziness problem solver who (i) has made peace with the big pillars of the welfare state, (ii) respects the results of elections, and (iii) has an America first trade and foreign policy agenda he will be very hard to stop. I wouldn't support the guy but I actually think it would be really good for American politics if that happened.
I think it could do a bit to diffuse some of the craziness in each wing of the GOP and show that they can succeed on something other than gutting the welfare state or Q-style conspiracy theories. That alone would be really positive for American politics.
"Trump himself happened to be president during four years of very low interest rates. He guessed that most economists were wrong, that the 2016 economy was not at full employment, and that it would be fine to raise domestic spending and raise military spending and cut taxes. And he was right."
A quibble, but worth pointing out he didn't think about any of this stuff. As you've noted many times over, by far the number one priority of GOP officeholders is cutting taxes for owners of capital. Trump going along with this agenda was basically their one price for continuing to support him through every scandal and every insane thing he said or did. Other then that, I want to note Trump did not guess economists were wrong. He blabbed a whole lot of things that have come into his head either via watching Fox News all day or stuff he somewhat remembered over the past 50 years and which has congealed into mush in his brain and sort of fell ass backwards into a "policy agenda" that happens to be a winning one in a low interest rate environment.
I think there is one timeline error in here, which is that DeSantis initially began raising teacher pay before the ARP came into effect. The first round of teacher pay increases came in the earlier part of 2020. I will confess that despite my long-standing liberalism I came to think of DeSantis somewhat fondly given that he raised my pay as a second-year teacher from 40,000 to 48,000 per year.
Another area that is worth pondering is DeSantis' decision to strongarm the Florida legislature into approving a reasonably generous medical marijuana licensing regime, as previously under Rick Scott they had been trying to slow-walk the medical marijuana thing until everyone forgot about the ballot initiative. That said, he's certainly no pro-drug libertarian either since he has recently placed new restrictions on it, but his position has always clearly been that people with valid medical prescriptions should be able to easily and conveniently access marijuana which would place him in a more moderate position relative to the party as a whole I think.
If someone only reads the NYTimes and Jonathan Chait over at the New Yorker, they will have a very skewed view of DeSantis' results. He has governed as a practical and pragmatic Republican. He pushes back pretty effectively to obvious attempts by the media to portray him as a fascist and anti-democratic grandma-killer. There are some actions he's taken that I think go a bit too far -- the Martha's Vineyard stunt for example -- but overall the citizens of Florida have been pretty happy with his governance. I think that should count for something.
DeSantis, pre-covid (whom I voted for) was a practical and pragmatic governor. Thereafter, he turned into a Fantasy-Football Governor who really only cares about dunking on libs and engaging in culture war battles, while mostly ignoring the actual issues the state is currently facing.
MY is way overthinking this. Conservative elites are flocking to DeSantis because they think he can beat Trump in the primary. That's it. There is really no policy projection at this point.
“But if you run for president, you have to start talking about your views on national policy issues.” True, but the fact that the GOP didn’t even bother to update their party platform in 2020 suggests they’re not entirely on board with this idea.
Platforms are terrible documents because they lay out views on far too many issues. It's much more reasonable to have positions on a handful of issues and basic governing values. Allowing diversity of thought on non-core issues allows a bigger tent. Given the party platforms I've read, no document is indeed better.
Candidates should have richer position statements than parties, especially on emerging issues. Having DeSantis and Trump should have room to disagree on policy, and less platform allows for that.
I dunno, I think it’s worthwhile to get your party’s general philosophy for governing at that moment in time down on paper?
I agree, but then I'm a policy person who loves digging into that kind of stuff.
More realistically, the number of people who are actually influenced by the party platform has got to be incredibly low. Almost everyone who reads it is likely already an incredibly knowledgeable partisan who isn't going to change their vote.
Just feels like the tip of the iceberg though. A party that can’t be bothered to do it also just doesn’t place a high priority on having any sort of policy strategy whatsoever.
I agree - though I would say that platforms are in a middle spot that is the worst of both worlds. The could either be as position papers or they could be an outline of general principles without specific policy positions. They end up being a mix with most of the disadvantages of both and few of the advantages of either.
If they were written as bland documents explaining positions and how they prioritized those positions relative to each other, then that would be useful.
But as it stands they are just PR documents.
They are documents written by far too many contributors, designed to placate one team’s various activist groups. Who engages in fraught tug-of-war matches to get just the right language in a document that always turns out to be meaningless.
I agree with this. I would go further and say that many positions are only there to placate a minor interest group and are not necessarily representative of the policy agenda.
Fair, but at the same time how much pressure was there on Obama to really discuss national policy issues when he ran in 2012? I think unless there's an active war Presidents typically get a pass on actually saying much of substance when running for reelection.
It’s true that the candidate doesn’t personally have to say much of substance. But it’s still traditional for the party to write a platform document. And in 2020, because of COVID, the republicans chose not to. Or rather they did, but it was something like one sentence long and it said “everything Trump says is right”.
I was just highly amused that the platform was still full of language bashing "the president."
Yes, I'm very well aware that it's normal to write a platform for a second term, thanks. The point is how often does a President get meaningfully questioned about it outside the scope of dealing with an active war?
The 2020 Democratic primary was full of policy ideas and attacks, arguable too many. Most presidential campaigns talk about policy more than Trump has
I mean, 2012 isn’t that long ago. I remember the ACA coming up once or twice in that campaign. Not to mention tax policy, Supreme Court appointment, views about the relative threat posed by Russia and China. The political spin was crude and basic, but I think voters accurately understood that Romney was a lot more likely to want to cut taxes at the top and cut entitlement spending - not least because of the extremely conservative veep he selected.
"He guessed that most economists were wrong, that the 2016 economy was not at full employment, and that it would be fine to raise domestic spending and raise military spending and cut taxes. And he was right."
Matt has consistently given Trump way too much credit on this point. Trump doesn't even know what full employment is. His thought process was at most something like: "people like tax cuts and spending, let's do both and pretend it'll be deficit neutral anyway". Bonus points if he actually believed it would be deficit neutral.
The White House is not just the President. Policy can be guided by smart, well-informed advisors to the President, which in Trump's case means we have to look at how policy was shaped by Steve Mnuchin, Peter Navarro . . . I'm sorry but I can't stop giggling . . . never mind.
I agree that Trump seems mostly unconcerned with technocratic policy tradeoffs, but I think there needs to be a limiting principle on how we meter out credit for "sound" policy choices and lucky guesses. I never see the same skepticism in regards to Obama on Syria, Biden on the ARP, etc and it seems uncharitable to unilaterally shit on Trump because he's kind of incoherent in public discourse. I think a lot of foreign policy, macroeconomic choices that politicians make are more unpredictable than we let on sometimes.
Beat me to it.
I don't know what Ron DeSantis would do as President, and neither does anyone else. I do know he has done a very good job as Governor in Florida. I suspect those who criticize him (from left and right) by pointing out that he lacks charisma and an outsized personality are really just hoping for another Trump run. I think his generally boring public persona is a positive.
Being President isn't just like being Governor, but a Governor is the closest thing our system has to a similar job. If he runs, I hope people will look to actual results and not the dishonest version of Florida that was described during the COVID-era.
Refusal to expand Medicaid should be disqualifying. I loved Kemp’s COVID policies but stuck with Abrams because of medicaid expansion and marijuana legalization.
What about refusal to accept election results ?
Abrams complained about voter suppression, not voter fraud. Not quite the same thing, at least in my mind…
Abrams didn’t inflame a mob to storm the state capitol.
Did I say she's as bad as Trump? No. But she refused to concede a legal election result, throwing around completely baseless allegations which she never took back or apologized for even after being thrown out of court. If we believe in democracy, and in having responsible leaders who help ensure people's trust in democracy, not cynically throw about destructive conspiracy theories, then we can't simply condemn reckless behavior only when it's done by other side, or give our side a pass just because the other side* is worse. On the contrary, now more than ever we cannot afford to engage in this behavior or to tolerate it. Put your money and votes where your mouth is.
*and to be clear, while the GOP is by far the worse actor nationally, in Georgia's gubernatorial specifically "the other side" is not worse on democracy but demonstrably *better.* If you cant' acknowledge Kemp's adherence to democratic norms your accusations of actual GOP bad actors rings hollow.
I voted for Abrams again because I oppose Kemp's record on guns, Medicaid and abortion, but I was uncomfortable with how she handled the 2018 loss and I wasn't exactly sad to see her lose this time.
“Refusal to expand Medicaid should be disqualifying”
Why? Because the Arc of the Moral Universe demands an ever more expansive federal welfare state?
Poor people having healthcare is good IMO
I entirely agree. It does not follow, however, that healthcare provided by the federal government is a good idea.
What is Ron DeSantis' alternative plan to get them healthcare?
In Florida the counties handle that.
Yes.
Ken Griffin... is that you? haha
No, I’ve been here for several years. Griffin is a newcomer.
Are you sure you're on the right Substack? One of Matt's core beliefs is in a "more expansive federal welfare state", and that belief is likely shared by most everyone on here, even if they disagree on exactly *how* expansive it should be or what form it should take.
"...that belief is likely shared by most everyone on here..."
Yes. And most of them seem decent, sincere, reasonable, and smart. Sometimes people who hold different opinions from mine are all of those things. Sometimes they have a wicked sense of humor, too.
I don't think we should expand the welfare state.
We've got 100 trillion in unfunded entitlements. Let's fix those first (benefit cuts plus tax increases) then we can talk
He should say what he would do as president if he decides to run — results are important but so are plans.
I'm sure others have mentioned this and it's not under your control, but Substack shouldn't show you as the "author" on a piece Matt wrote. Very confusing.
Fair but it was also found it helpful to have Milan’s comment flared - maybe contributor or similar would be more appropriate....
I think the Federal government is so much different than states that it is a way a different ballgame.
From a political saviness perspective I also appreciated HOW DeSantis raised teacher rates. He raised salaries of junior teachers more than those with longer tenure. This made the teacher unions very angry but it would have been too petty for them to make a big stink out of it.
Source: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/fl-ne-florida-teachers-rally-20200113-zsi32dkrircg3hhizztjea2pmu-story.html
I think the reason people don't focus on asking DeSantis questions like this is that it doesn't really matter. Everyone knows that he'll do and support whatever the prevailing winds are in the Republican Party at the time, calibrated by general public opinion polls. Unlike Trump, DeSantis isn't a charismatic or large enough figure to set the agenda in the Republican Party, just to put his finger in the wind and follow it, Rubio style. So it's not very informative to ask him really specific policy questions like this.
My sense is that RDS is first and foremost a craven politician in the Rubio / Cruz mold, which admittedly gets you a long ways, but I think you run into a wall at a certain point. Trump’s pathological narcissism made him in some ways a very brave politician, in terms of taking positions, and I think that lends a certain charisma, if you can sell it.
To be fair, this describes most politicians, Democrats as well as Republicans.
Fluke up from the Tokyo Sex Whale! My day is now 10% better.
As best I can tell, Biden is exactly this! Biden's political views have been described as finding the center of the Democratic party and governing from there. As Matt described yesterday, he has been restrained the last two years by razor small majorities and Manchin - to his benefit!
I think the most meaningful question we probably will ask any of these candidates is what they will push for if they get a majority in the house and win 54 senate seats. Will they push to abolish the filibuster? If yes, then their governing agenda is going to be much more radical.
Your analysis begs the question. The Presidential primary is a major input into which way the wind will blow.
I understand your point but think you're way overstating it. Name the candidates whose answers to questions like these during primary elections have meaningfully changed the course of their party's policy agenda. I bet you can count them on one hand, aggregate for both parties over at least the last quarter century.
I think Elizabeth Warren in 2020, and Bernie Sanders in 2016, had a major influence on how Democratic politicians set their policies. I think in 2008, both Clinton and Obama basically collaboratively wrote a set of policies, with the only substantive difference being that Obama opposed the individual mandate for health insurance. John Edwards had effects on policy ideas in 2004.
Trump. He promised to protect social security and Medicare and to blow up stupid trade deals, and he’s moved the needle of Republican politics more than anyone since Nixon.
I think Allan’s top-level comment already conceded this point. He’s arguing that Trump’s kind of the exception that proves the rule here.
Trump is so big an exception and such an obvious template for Republicans with presidential ambitions that he swallows the rule.
Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" was pretty significant.
Ron DeSantis positions do not matter. Voters are not making decisions based on policy, especially during the primaries. Ron DeSantis needs to run, like Trump did, on vibes. Trump's vibes were negative and revanchist and suited a certain malaise that Hillary Clinton seemed to inspire in anyone who's not a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.
DeSantis' vibes will be different and, I think, he can run a more positive message of, more or less, freedom. He should create (to some extent fabricate or exaggerate) something called "The Florida Miracle" and hammer it again and again to make sure everyone knows that Desantis is responsible for the Florida having the best time ever. He should run on a record of seemingly unprecedented success. I think I've posted something like this before but the push is:
- What MY said about school pay, the quite high NAEP scores for 4th grade, and the effort to empower parents and disempower educational bureaucrats and ideologues
- Breaking the back of higher ed and the woke professors by empowering state bureaucrats to muzzle, penalize, and fire people with incorrect opinions. Put Ben Sasse out there as a surrogate to highlight all the amazing stuff the U of F does and how woke higher ed threatens technological/economic progress
- Trott out some of those hand-crafted numbers about how Florida is one of the best states to do business, point to high employment rates, low taxes, etc
- Woke capitalism is a dead end, and DeSantis is the harbinger of that end. Business should be business (see above) and the state shouldn't be subsidizing companies through tax breaks when they don't support the people of Florida
- Massive population growth proves how amazing Florida is and shows the success of its policies
- Show that RDS is a bipartisan figure and will work with Democrats when the issues are right. Show lots of pictures with Biden and highlight hurricane relief efforts and how you led the (by 2024) amazing recovery of southwest Florida from Ian
You get the point. None of these are "true" so much as they are the kind of "facts" that most people will just believe at first glance. No amound of Vox explainers about how bad Florida's schools are or how its lopsided demographics are a huge drag on the economy etc etc will change anything. Doesn't matter. Nobody important will read it, certainly not primary voters.
Run on the good vibes generated by the Florida Miracle.
> Voters are not making decisions based on policy, especially during the primaries.
The fact that Charlie Baker got elected governor and Geoff Diehl didn't (and that Baker might not have even won the GOP primary) clearly has something to do with their views on policy.
Sure, but can you say that Massachusetts voters are more indicative of average American voters than Florida voters are?
And I'm not sure Barker sees it that way. He's going around pointing the finger at extremism as the reason for GOP failures in the midterms but look at what he says about it - it's not policy: "They [he's talking about voters] want people who they believe are going to be reasonable, who are going to be collaborative, and who represent a fundamental tenet of democracy that it's supposed to be a distributed decision-making model, and you're supposed to be OK with."
Do these "my state has done great while I've been governor" approaches ever have any effect? Paging Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker . . .
I mean wasn’t it the pitch for Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and GWB? Reagan’s campaign was before my time but I remember quite a lot of it in 92 and 00.
Not so much Reagan but perhaps an argument for Clinton and GWB. But I don't think their records mattered that much in the primaries, which is more my point.
Re - point 3 ... Hadn't thought about until just now but the founders of three of Chicago's latest big exits ($100m+) all moved their families to Miami. Not sure if this is a broader trend - but they didn't stay here and they didn't move to Cali.
Right. And it doesn't matter if it's a trend or not. What matters is that DeSantis can plausibly say it's indicative of Florida's super-duper awesome business paradise. Who wouldn't want the Florida Miracle to be spread nationwide?
Could it be that DeSantis is just a pragmatic politician with a fair amount of flexibility on policy positions? (Some might say machiavellian.) Reading through this history of his political career, it seems like he is just following the Republican party’s hectic evolution without any noteworthy dissent.
Like many Republicans, including Trump, DeSantis likely favors tax cuts for the rich. And like Trump, he may evade explicitly stating that policy position should he run for president. Even in debates with the Democratic candidate, DeSantis could deflect when pressed on that specific issue.
Trump himself didn’t seem to pay much of a price for his tax cuts for the rich in the 2020 presidential election. It could be because Trump was defined by numerous other issues of higher salience. DeSantis could similarly avoid making this an issue in the 2024 election by leaning into non-fiscal issues, like immigration and culture war stuff.
Weirdly, this sort of describes a Republican version of Joe Biden who was sort of the median Democratic Senator for 36 years.
Now, the median of the Trump Republican party is semi-crazy, so if he runs I expect him to try to sell himself as just the professionalized version of Trump.
A meaner Joe Biden is honestly an excellent analogy.
DeSantis is really smart/academically successful. Joe Biden almost failed out of law school. I don't think they are that similar.
It's funny because you mentioned neither of the things that come to mind when I think of DeSantis: (1) his shtick of using government to "own the libs" at whatever cost (think: picking a fight with Disney over their corporate-friendly LGBTQ stance) and (2) the Martha's Vineyard immigration stunt. A lot of this plays well in conservative media, but once DeSantis gets on a national stage, he may end up being "Trump without the charm" as I've heard him described. Probably my own personal bias here talking, but #2 could end up really hurting him... these were mostly Venezuelans, who should be one of the most sympathetic groups of asylum seekers to conservatives! All he'd have to do is say, "This terribly run socialist government destroyed these people's lives to want to come seek refuge in our pro-business country," and they'd be eating it up.
Also, I don't think people realize just how terrible shape the Florida Democratic Party is in right now. They had to recruit Charlie Crist, of all people, to run as their gubernatorial candidate, and they actually thought this was a good idea!
>>but #2 could end up really hurting him... these were mostly Venezuelans, who should be one of the most sympathetic groups of asylum seekers to conservatives!<<
Sure didn't hurt him last week with Hispanic voters in his own state.
True. But two notes on that: (1) Cubans have never voted like other Latinos (not that any Latino groups are monolithic, but that's another story) and tend to think of their situation as unique (and it is!). And (2) Charlie Crist was a terrible candidate. You've got to give voters a good alternative, and Florida Dems most likely certainly did not.
I believe he won big in non-Cuban Latino districts too?
Latinos don’t just inherently sympathize with undocumented immigrants! I think the recent LA city council controversy highlighted why that might be - the Venezuelans who left 10 years ago might be different than the ones leaving now, just like people from wealthy parts of Mexico don’t inherently sympathize with people from poor parts of Mexico. The flattening of racism to “whiteness” has really limited Democrats’ ability to understand the complexity of identity issues, when in reality Latinos from different backgrounds can be racist against each other in the same way different types of white Europeans are often racist against each other (less common in the US, but racism against Eastern Europeans was a big driver of Brexit).
“ Amid all the controversy, Florida Hispanics side with the governor on the Martha’s Vineyard flight, with 50% in favor and 43% opposed to the relocation, according to the poll. Independents joined Republicans in lending majority support to the governor on the issue while Democrats were opposed.
Support for DeSantis’ migrant relocation move was strongest among Hispanic immigrants. Those born outside the United States favored the policy by 52% to 41%, according to the poll. Those born in the United States were almost equally divided, with 49% in favor and 45% opposed.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/floridas-hispanic-voters-back-desantis-crist-support-marthas-vineyard-rcna53493
Haven't seen the exit polls, but very well could be. Agree with Mark below, and this is a separate issue for the "demographics is destiny" believers who are in for a rude awakening on this topic.
Regarding (2), Demings appeared to be a decent candidate--or at least a much better one than Crist--and performed as poorly against Rubio, one of the most transparently craven and insubstantial politicians around today. It just seems to me that Florida has become a significantly more conservative/Republican state in the last 25 years or so, and that Hispanic voters have not been immune to that trend.
No doubt about that. Although DeSantis and Rick Scott both won in 2018 by less than 1%... I find it to believe that Florida swung that much to the right in just four years. More conservative for sure, but a lot of the blame has to fall on the Dems organization. They lost Miami-Dade! That would've been unheard of even four years ago.
That’s a good point but here’s my guess : 1. 2018 was peak blue wave and red *still* won in fl. 2022 nationally was bluer than expected but not like 2018
2. RDS has incumbency advantage with down ballot effects
3. 4 years is not nothing, the state’s baseline can definitely shift in non negligible ways, and 4 years that include COVID era is probably equivalent to something like 8 years of pre COVID times , so the state is actually much redder than 2018 and it may have already been quite redder 2018 in ways the blue wave masked (#1 above)
4.as you say dem organization on the state may have been lousy but I’d wager factors 1-3 were more important
There's also this (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/11/ron-desantis-skepticism-2024-republican-primary-president-appeal.html). Yes it's Slate so take the analysis with a big grain of salt, but the demographic info is useful. Far more people moved to Florida than I had realized, enough to make a pretty big difference! In fact, they get a little screwed here being that this all would've been after the 2020 census.
That's still far less than the DeSantis/Rubio margins of course, and I'm sure your points are a large contributor as well.
"It's funny because you mentioned neither of the things that come to mind when I think of DeSantis: (1) his shtick of using government to "own the libs" at whatever cost (think: picking a fight with Disney over their corporate-friendly LGBTQ stance) and (2) the Martha's Vineyard immigration stunt."
You're kind of proving Matt's point here. The point of this post is that for all of the news coverage and hype DeSantis has received as a result of these types of stunts, there has been very little coverage on kinds of positions he would take on boring but important Federal policy issues.
I think that's how traditional patriotic Americans would see it. There used to be a saying: "If we don't like your government, then we'll like your refugees."
But Republicans have shown that's no longer the case for many of them. They seem to dislike Venezuela and dislike Venezuelan asylum seekers and are totally unbothered by the contradiction.
If DeSantis runs for president in 2024, I don’t think his policy positions will be that important. Instead, his fight with Trump in the Republican primary will be the defining feature. And even if DeSantis wins the nomination, he’ll still have to contend with a vengeful Trump; a Trump who could run a third party spoiler campaign or at least instruct his supporters to refrain from voting in the general election.
Unless Trump is in jail, otherwise barred from office, or his heart finally gives out, I don’t see how DeSantis or any other non-Trump candidate could win the general election.
Trump losing primaries and angrly breaking apart the gop with his own party and alternative slate of candidates seems like the best case scenario for 2024 (I think). Might be the only way for Dems to win with trifecta! Also the most likely way the dem gop duopoly could be broken (at least temporarily).
>>Unless Trump is in jail, otherwise barred from office,<<
How can he Trump be barred from office? The votes don't exist in Congress (14th amendment solution; and even if the votes could be found it's not clear the Supreme Court would allow this), and the constitution doesn't prohibit a convicted and even incarcerated felon from running for president. Hell, he could run the country from Alcatraz as far as I know.
I'm pretty confident Nic Cage and Sean Connery's ghost could take out a vengeful Trump trying to run the country while holed up in Alcatraz.
I had never voted Republican in my life and I became a huge DeSantis fan during COVID. Our family suffered so much under our Dem governor’s COVID policies and I loved how DeSantis didn’t give in to the global mob panic about staying closed and instead looked to Europe and other experts and read studies and looked at the data. I was doing that too and coming to the same conclusions as DeSantis. Yet the hapless school boards and town councils in my state were not, and our governor was doing nothing to convince them to open. I voted Repub for first time in my life as a pure backlash to COVID policies in 2021. I went back to Dem in last week’s midterms. But in 2024, if DeSantis is on the ballot, it’s going to be very hard for me to resist voting for him.
Also, I was in Florida in spring of 2021 and there was just as much of a rush to get vaccines as there was in my home state, this idea that RD did anything to prevent vaccines is ridic.
If by "ridic" you mean "undeniable": https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/ron-desantis-goes-all-in-on-vaccine-skepticism.html
I'm sorry, you can't ignore the fact he put Joseph Ledapo up as Surgeon General and then keep on board after re-election and tell me you have someone committed to sane COVID policies. Ladopo is, in layman's terms, a nut. He should be nowhere near making any sort of medical or health care policy for a state. To not just hire him but keep on board is a GIANT mark against any defense you want to have of RDS covid policies. I really can't emphasize enough that keeping Ladopo is a giant sign that he's NOT actually reading the research out of Europe, but instead trying to keep in the good graces of GOP primary voters over looking out for what's best for his state.
I'll add in the "who you hire should count for something in evaluating your performance" category that having Christina Pushaw as part of your team is also a giant mark against you. There are a number of things to say about her that would be disqualifying but right near the top of the list has to be smearing gay people as "groomers" (https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1499890719691051008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw). And this is especially relevant given her job as a rapid-response director! Whatever commentary you want to say in support of the "Don't say gay" bill, characterizing the bill the way she does is beyond repulsive.
Keeping these two people in positions of authority has to be considered in any evaluation of RDS.
What state do you live in?
If Matt's suspicion is right, that DeSantis is a Ryan style Republican in a bit of Trump's clothing then I think his fortunes will diminish.
The big threat is the #1 scenario. If he can position himself as a serious, anti-woke/left wing cultural craziness problem solver who (i) has made peace with the big pillars of the welfare state, (ii) respects the results of elections, and (iii) has an America first trade and foreign policy agenda he will be very hard to stop. I wouldn't support the guy but I actually think it would be really good for American politics if that happened.
I think it could do a bit to diffuse some of the craziness in each wing of the GOP and show that they can succeed on something other than gutting the welfare state or Q-style conspiracy theories. That alone would be really positive for American politics.
"Trump himself happened to be president during four years of very low interest rates. He guessed that most economists were wrong, that the 2016 economy was not at full employment, and that it would be fine to raise domestic spending and raise military spending and cut taxes. And he was right."
A quibble, but worth pointing out he didn't think about any of this stuff. As you've noted many times over, by far the number one priority of GOP officeholders is cutting taxes for owners of capital. Trump going along with this agenda was basically their one price for continuing to support him through every scandal and every insane thing he said or did. Other then that, I want to note Trump did not guess economists were wrong. He blabbed a whole lot of things that have come into his head either via watching Fox News all day or stuff he somewhat remembered over the past 50 years and which has congealed into mush in his brain and sort of fell ass backwards into a "policy agenda" that happens to be a winning one in a low interest rate environment.
I think there is one timeline error in here, which is that DeSantis initially began raising teacher pay before the ARP came into effect. The first round of teacher pay increases came in the earlier part of 2020. I will confess that despite my long-standing liberalism I came to think of DeSantis somewhat fondly given that he raised my pay as a second-year teacher from 40,000 to 48,000 per year.
Another area that is worth pondering is DeSantis' decision to strongarm the Florida legislature into approving a reasonably generous medical marijuana licensing regime, as previously under Rick Scott they had been trying to slow-walk the medical marijuana thing until everyone forgot about the ballot initiative. That said, he's certainly no pro-drug libertarian either since he has recently placed new restrictions on it, but his position has always clearly been that people with valid medical prescriptions should be able to easily and conveniently access marijuana which would place him in a more moderate position relative to the party as a whole I think.
If someone only reads the NYTimes and Jonathan Chait over at the New Yorker, they will have a very skewed view of DeSantis' results. He has governed as a practical and pragmatic Republican. He pushes back pretty effectively to obvious attempts by the media to portray him as a fascist and anti-democratic grandma-killer. There are some actions he's taken that I think go a bit too far -- the Martha's Vineyard stunt for example -- but overall the citizens of Florida have been pretty happy with his governance. I think that should count for something.
DeSantis, pre-covid (whom I voted for) was a practical and pragmatic governor. Thereafter, he turned into a Fantasy-Football Governor who really only cares about dunking on libs and engaging in culture war battles, while mostly ignoring the actual issues the state is currently facing.
I think this is like asking what is the the true position of an election in quantum superposition. It strictly speaking does not exist until measured.
After not expanding Medicaid and winning by a record margin, DeSantis is unlikely to conclude that Medicaid expansion is the path to victory.
MY is way overthinking this. Conservative elites are flocking to DeSantis because they think he can beat Trump in the primary. That's it. There is really no policy projection at this point.