There's a lot of chatter right now about Florida Governor Ron Desantis' presumed presidential campaign sputtering before it's even started. Donors are going public with complaints and he's sinking in the polls while Donald Trump is rising after his indictment in the porn star hush money case. I'm old enough to remember primaries when Bill Clinton was political roadkill, John Kerry was dead in the water and Donald Trump couldn't possibly win so I wouldn't count anyone out just yet. But if there's one thing we do know already, it's that if DeSantis doesn't decide to take his ball and go home, the battle will be ferocious.
Even more dismaying is the race to the bottom they've already started when it comes to the culture war. DeSantis got off to a strong start with his war against "woke" which consists of attacking everyone from school teachers to teenagers to Disney for failing to be properly cruel to immigrants, transgender kids and Black people. His latest red meat offering to the MAGA base was to sign a bill lowering his previous abortion ban from 15 weeks to 6 weeks and censoring all discussions of LGBTQ issues in Florida public schools through the 12th grade. (This was an expansion of his earlier ban on all such discussions through the 3rd grade.)
