Ron DeSantis is struggling without the Covid issue

Right now he's "Paul Ryan but says 'woke' a lot" instead of "Trump but competent"

Los Angeles Area readers — remember to stop by today’s Member Meetup at 5:30 p.m. at Bonaventure Brewing Co. if you’re around!

Ron DeSantis seems to be flopping a bit in the polls right now, leading to heightened media scrutiny of his every decision and personality attribute. When someone is doing well, these things are often examined through a lens of “why is this guy doing well?” and spun as positive. But when someone is doing poorly, it’s all read through a very different lens and spun negatively. When Obama was up in the polls, we were told people liked his calm, cool demeanor; when he was doing poorly, he was cold and hard to relate to.

So instead of asking why DeSantis is doing poorly at the moment, I think it’s actually more instructive to look back and try to reconstruct how he became a Schelling Point for Republicans who were not “anti-Trump” but who did want to avoid renominating Trump.

After all, DeSantis’ baseline qualifications for this role — solid conservative on policy, …