Ron DeSantis will never be elected POTUS

Get the Point!

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will never become President of the United States no matter how many reboots, rebrands, mulligans, or "do overs" that he and his foundering campaign announce over the next few months in the public square. 

Old “De-Racist” DeSantis

Now, I could end today's blog right now by saying that DeSantis won't win because he is an unlikeable, whiny, petulant, petty little man, but someone could counter that Donald Trump won the presidential race over Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite many Americans attaching the very same pejorative attributes to him. 

But as I've written time and again, the major difference between Trump and DeSantis is that the former was a celebrity and in America, people are fascinated—if not obsessed—with the rich and famous, especially when the rich and famous person also has an element of comedic charisma, no matter how inappropriate, which Trump had and used to draw enough Democrats and independents to his cause in 2016. 

DeSantis, on the contrary, may share 99.9 percent of Trump's political views, but he broods and easily comes off as the guy who was never all that tough at any point in his life, but now that he has an armed security detail, he pops off at media members, corporate honchos, or taxpaying citizens who oppose his vision of what Florida—and ostensibly America—should be in this modern era. 

My major beef with DeSantis is that his modern vision is simply a recrudescence of Florida's past...its slavery and Jim Crow past...and how the ghosts of that era are awake and compel those Floridians with any semblance of common sense and decency to remain "woke."

Lest we forget that Florida, a former member of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865, later drafted the same Jim Crow segregation laws as its sister states in Dixie towards the end of the 19th Century!

Lest we forget that during the Jim Crow era that Florida was one of the leading states for lynchings per capita, and that cartoons and post cards like the one below often joked about little Black kids being used as alligator bait! 

Lest we forget that in addition to lynchings from as far north as Tallahassee to as far south as Miami, that the thriving Black town of Rosewood, Florida was razed and reportedly hundreds of Blacks were lynched and tossed into the woods and swamps in Levy County, Florida near Gainesville!

Claude Neal, 19, was lynched in Marianna, Florida—an hour west of Tallahassee—in 1934. While the Florida NAACP requested that then Gov. David Scholz intervene with the National Guard, Scholz declined and left Neal's fate to the hands of over 1000 white men, women, and children who brutally lynched him before hanging his charred remains on the courthouse square.

Lest we forget that the Florida legislature and Board of Control underfunded Florida A&M University by billions of dollars throughout the early 20th Century despite the U.S. Supreme Court's mandate that it was ok for the school to be "separate," but that it was to have “equal” funding to the University of Florida and the Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee— which changed to Florida State University once it became a coed school after World War II—per the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision!

Lest we forget that even when the Brown vs. Board of Education decision overturned Plessy in 1954—requiring that the South desegregate "with all deliberate speed," that it would take well over a decade before Florida's 67 school districts (along with UF and FSU) would stop fighting to stall the integration of publicly funded schools in the courts!

On a personal note, my father graduated from segregated (all Black) Miami Carver High School in 1958 because he could not attend segregated (all white) Coral Gables High School. Dad then accepted a scholarship to play football at segregated Florida A&M University because he could not play for the hometown Miami Hurricanes.

The original Charles Hobbs twice made the segregated Miami Times All-City football team (1956-57) before playing at segregated Florida A&M University from 1958-62.

Similarly, my mother graduated from segregated (all Black) FAMU High School in the early 1960’s because she could not attend segregated (all white) Leon High School or Florida High School; momma grew up on East Gaines Street directly across from Florida State University's Doak Campbell Stadium—but could not set foot inside of it because of Jim Crow segregation!

Equally deplorable, Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, where I was born in May of 1972, was only integrated in December of 1970; two of my older siblings were born in the segregated and underfunded FAMU Hospital in the 1960's!

The Florida A&M Hospital, circa 1961, was the only full-service hospital for Blacks in North Florida during the Jim Crow era…

Knowing this history, I absolutely DESPISE how Ron DeSantis, a history major at Yale and a lawyer who knows these facts, too, has wagered that dragging Florida back to its racist past is a winning formula for his future presidential ambitions. Such shows that earning degrees from Yale and Harvard Law did not endow DeSantis with enough analytical reasoning ability to realize that his blatant and subtle forms of racism ONLY appeal to a segment of the white population that is in the ideological minority!

In conclusion, while DeSantis just may be able to win the Republican nomination IF Trump's campaign sinks due to his myriad legal woes, Florida's governor will still lose and lose badly in the general election—just like Trump did in 2020—because most American voters realize that anger and divisive rhetoric and policies towards Blacks, Browns, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community do not solve inflation, create jobs, or provide security at home—or protect Americans and American financial interests abroad!