Requiem for a Loser: In loving memory of Ron DeSantis

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On Sunday morning, hours after getting sonned by a South Carolina fourth-grade teacher, Florida’s charmless, height-challenged governor folded up his far-fetched dream of becoming America’s commander-in-chief and licked the unaugmented boots of his bitter rival. 

Ron DeSantis has aborted his presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.

While the whining, anti-woke, autocratic autobot tried to position himself as a leader who was sent by God to govern his chosen people (Caucasian America), the GOP’s base saw a munchkin masquerading as a MAGA Republican. Try as he might, DeDantis failed to convince the GOP base that he was anything more than a high heel-wearing wimp devoid of charisma and common sense. Even though he gave it his all, Ron DeSantis was exposed for who he truly is.

Ron DeSantis is a loser. 

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Rarely has white mediocrity flamed out in such a spectacular fashion. To be clear, DeSantis was undone by his own inadequacies. After chucking 87,000 lives and $150 million into the wind for the chance to become the Head Totalitarian in Charge, the Dollar Tree Donald Trump managed to win a paltry 21% of Republican voters in the Iowa Caucus. That’s right, in a state that is 90% white, only one in five Republicans wanted Ron DeSantis to become president. According to polling data, he would’ve fared worse in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. 

On paper, ol’ “Pudding Fingers” was the perfect candidate. He was the governor of a swing state whose 30 electoral votes may ultimately decide the presidential election. Not only was he as virulently anti-Black as his arch-nemesis, but he also demonstrated that he could turn his party’s white supremacist sentiment into actual policy. His top 10 anti-Black achievements include, in no particular order:

1. He blocked a course on AP African American studies.
2. He dismantled a majority Black congressional district.
3. He attacked a prosecutor who fought voter suppression. 
4. He stripped funding from public colleges’ diversity, equity and inclusion programs. 
5. He built a legislative time machine that transformed the trans-Atlantic slave trade into an unpaid apprenticeship. 
6. He made it illegal for students in his state to say “gay.” 
7. He avoided questions about white supremacist violence at a vigil for victims of white supremacist violence. 
8. His STOP WOKE Act protected white babies and demonized Black history.
9. He put uneducated, inexperienced white rights activist Christopher Rufo on the board of Florida’s most prestigious state college. 
10. He battled Disney to stop the scourge of negro mermaids.

This list doesn’t even include his racist rhetoric or his multistate human trafficking plot. Ron DeSantis is so racist that the NAACP had to issue a national racism advisory for the state he governed. Most impressively, he did it all on his tiptoes while walking around in augmented stilettos. 

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And he still lost.

To be fair, even though the obnoxious, oafish governor is as magnetic as a ball of reused aluminum foil, his political career is not over. It is very possible that he could resurface as Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate. White mediocrity is nothing if not resilient, and “Also-Ran” DeSantis is still a white man. There is a good reason why Ron DeSantis was deluded into believing that a pedestrian, dog-whistling clodhopper in go-go boots could become the Republican nominee for president. In America, it isn’t just possible, it is likely. If a criminally corrupt, racist, make-believe billionaire like Donald Trump can scam his way into the White House, then why can’t a muttonhead like DeSantis hornswoggle the dimwitted white masses into voting for him? 

Sadly for him, that regressive, white-centric version of America to which Trump, DeSantis and the GOP base dreams of is gone. The only way they will get it back is for America to remain asleep. That’s why DeSantis built his failed “anti-woke” campaign on the sedative of white supremacy, the “myth” of meritocracy and the specter of pro-white, anti-democratic authoritarianism. He was never ever ever ever going to be president.

So today, we salute a verified, documented American loser. Now that DeSantis’s inclusion in the GOP nomination process is over, he joins Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy and the diverse list of people who never had any equity in the Republican base. His presidential aspirations are nothing more than a lost cause; a footnote in his whitewashed version of history. It was all a finesse.

But “woke” won. 

Unfortunately, finesse is something Ron DeSantis never had.

 Michael Harriot is an economist, cultural critic and championship-level Spades player. His New York Times bestseller Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America is available everywhere books are sold.

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