The Queasy Liberal Schadenfreude of Watching Trump Wreck DeSantis

America loves an underdog, but perhaps not as much as it loves to watch a tumbling Icarus. No one’s wings have melted more dramatically and publicly over the past few months than Ron DeSantis’s. Eight months ago, the Florida governor was the man who would finally finish Donald Trump. Today he’s scraping to keep ahead of Vivek Ramaswamy, whom hardly anyone had heard of until recently.

Nearly every day, DeSantis seems to have some new problem. A New York Times poll published on Monday shows Trump with a commanding lead over DeSantis, and the specific breakdown of voter attitudes and profiles shows why it will be so hard for DeSantis to close that gap. DeSantis is in the midst of what is described as a campaign reboot but looks mostly like a mass firing, with the same old talking points and approaches—and, most important, the same old candidate. Trump has happily exploited DeSantis’s weaknesses, saying he has “no personality” and boasting in June, “Since Ron DeSanctimonious announced his candidacy, he has wasted over $15 million just so he can drop into nearly single digits.”

For anyone on the left side of American politics, this has provided a queasy schadenfreude. DeSantis’s exceptionally effective implementation of hard-right policies in Florida and his overt antagonism toward the media had made him seem like a figure of unusual promise and danger. Seeing Trump run circles around DeSantis with an ease not on display since the 2016 GOP primary has been entertaining to watch, but it’s a tainted pleasure, because the likely result is Trump as the Republican nominee—with a real chance of becoming president again.

[Helen Lewis: The humiliation of Ron DeSantis]

A few months ago, a lively debate took place in certain precincts over who would be worse for American democracy, President DeSantis or a reprise of President Trump. On the one hand, Trump has no respect for democratic institutions or rule of law and already attempted an autogolpe; on the other, his administration was characterized by frequent buffoonery and failure to execute. DeSantis, for his part, looked somewhat more like a normal conservative Republican, but his selling point was that unlike Trump, he actually knew how to get results, as his Florida résumé demonstrated—meaning he might be better at putting extreme policies into place. That debate faded a bit as DeSantis moved hard right, signing a very strict abortion law and escalating his feud with Disney, but mostly it has faded as DeSantis seems less and less likely to defeat Trump.

DeSantis’s collapse has happened in part because he may just not be a very good politician. The hard-right turn and falling polls are not unrelated; he’s pursuing ideas that most Republicans don’t support, much less most voters. The more voters see of him, the less they want to elect him. In a famous formulation, Americans want leaders with whom they can imagine drinking a beer. DeSantis comes across as the kind of guy who would lecture you about the empty calories in your glass, glower while he hurriedly gulped some non–AB InBev product, and then depart abruptly, leaving a bad tip. As Nate Silver recently pointed out, DeSantis’s electoral record isn’t great. His 2022 performance was impressive, but in his other four races, he’s run behind a generic Republican. Trump likes to say that he made DeSantis’s career with his endorsement in the 2018 Florida governor’s race, and he might have a point.

Which leads to the other big factor in DeSantis’s poor showing: Trump has been very good at beating him up. In 2018, 2020, and 2022, Trump led the Republican Party to defeat, so not since 2016 have we seen Trump demonstrating his full ability to shred an opponent. There’s something satisfying about watching an artist at work, even when that work is petty bullying of political rivals. Although he upset Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election, he’s always been best at taking down fellow Republicans, so perhaps it’s no surprise that he’s so good at undermining DeSantis.

DeSantis (and other GOP candidates) is rightly afraid to attack Trump at the risk of alienating his base, but can’t afford not to attack him in order to draw a distinction. Either way, he can’t win. When DeSantis has echoed Trump, the former president has mocked him as a cheap knockoff. When DeSantis has (cautiously) criticized him, Trump has quoted DeSantis’s past agreement. When DeSantis has tried to outflank Trump to the right, Trump has mostly stood to the side and watched. (That’s a good reminder that although Trump governed as an aspiring authoritarian, the Republican field was to the right of him on many issues in 2016.) Trump has reveled in racking up endorsements from officeholders—and especially in snatching those of most Florida Republicans from right under DeSantis’s nose.

[Mark Leibovich: Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis]

None of the liberal glee at watching Trump skewer DeSantis reflects newfound affection for the former president. There’s no Republican candidate whom Democrats would actually like (you can bet that the progressive crush on Chris Christie would evaporate quickly if he were out talking about his policy ideas rather than attacking Trump). But many people in both parties believe that Trump would be the weakest possible Republican candidate in 2024—and that leaves many Democrats in the strange position of rooting for Trump in the primary.

Trump may not be as weak as his detractors imagine, or, at the very least, DeSantis may be no stronger. DeSantis’s wooden personality, very conservative platform, and pathetic performance thus far are enough to make one wonder whether he’d make Michael Dukakis look like a strong general-election candidate. Even if Trump is a weak candidate, the general election will likely be decided by a very few percentage points and perhaps just tens of thousands of votes in key states. Given the vagaries of the economy, President Joe Biden’s age and tendency toward gaffes, and the randomness of any election, Trump could very well win, inaugurating a disastrous second presidency. Liberals can’t in good faith pull for either man in the primary. In contemporary American politics, the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy.