Ron DeSantis launched his presidential campaign in a Twitter interview with Elon Musk. That May 24 fiasco (inept risk management) was properly ridiculed. Yet, a forward campaign easily would have overshadowed it; now, in retrospect, it was seemingly a precursor to political mayhem.

For voters, an ineffectual campaign implicitly previews an inept presidency. Now, the media and voters look to this preconceived notion of failure — arguably a self-fulfilling prophecy — as a sign that DeSantis is going down. But disintegration is not inevitable. He is weakened but can still get his act together.

Unrelenting, Self-Inflicted Wounds

DeSantis initially should have downplayed expectations. His identification was limited, perception of him unformed or tentative. All DeSantis needed for a while was to raise his profile. The Trump attack ads, notably those on Social Security, nurtured DeSantis’ early decline in the polls. But DeSantis moved impulsively, not deliberatively, and made strategic blunders and tactical errors, too numerous to recount here.

Twitter itself has degenerated, so Elon Musk rebrands it “X,” portending Big Change. The DeSantis campaign is in tumult, so DeSantis cuts staff by a third, a Band-Aid approach — as if fiscal management is the main problem when he too needs Big Change.

This “staff reduction” may placate bean-counter mega-donors, but it also telegraphs downward momentum. Nonetheless, it failed to mask the overdue firing of problem staffers. One aide had produced the revolting, misleading attack ad on gays, implying implausibly that former President Donald Trump is somehow pro-woke. A self-inflicted wound, the ad’s unflattering imagery of DeSantis at times made it seem as though it was an attack ad on DeSantis himself.

Unfortunately, self-inflicted wounds are unrelenting for DeSantis. He properly scored against the absurd sexuality of young children, then inexplicably raised the ante to high school. He is pro-life but escalated provocatively to a six-week abortion ban. Republicans need to depict the other side as extreme, not become an extremist caricature. In sum, DeSantis runs an old-style and traditional, nowadays irrelevant and even destructive, campaign that appeals to extremes in a primary. As if the internet and YouTube don’t exist, DeSantis solicits a base within a base — potentially dooming his prospects for a general election.

The real problem is, at a time when voters reject darkness and stridency — Tim Scott’s optimism is refreshing — DeSantis’ tone is confrontational, so his team thought that the awful anti-gay ad was on message. Further, note that so-called independent super PACs usually complement the candidate’s message, but DeSantis’s “Never Back Down SuperPAC” cannot waste its $130 million on stupidity; you can only spend so much on a ground game that, absent Iowa, only comes into play if your candidacy is viable and competitive. Moreover, his super PAC’s name will haunt him anytime he walks back a position, as he did on his characterization of the Ukraine war.

DeSantis Needs to Show Potential for Success

The DeSantis campaign has already squandered some of its $20 million, but the problem runs far deeper than bleeding dollars. The strategy of the campaign is deeply flawed. The candidate ignores that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line: He need only show that he can win the presidency and Trump cannot. Everything else is noise.

Despite peace and prosperity, Trump lost the midterms in 2018. Then Trump lost the presidency two years later against weak opponent Joe Biden. In 2022, Trump’s antics again kept Senate Democrats in control. In contrast, DeSantis, chief executive of a major state with a solid record of achievement — the best-kept secret of his campaign — won reelection that year in Florida by a landslide. DeSantis is an intelligent man who does well in interviews, but in sound bites, he can appear angry rather than thoughtful and presidential. Instead of being Trump lite, it’s as if he aspires to be Trump heavy. He has bought into a preposterous strategy.

He must simply get this across: Trump is a loser; DeSantis is a winner.

Trump voters are divided into two groups. First, there are the diehards — as Trump metaphorically put it, “I could stay in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” DeSantis will never get this hardcore bloc, no matter how much he tries to outflank Trump by arguing implausibly that Trump is “soft” — a squish — on pro-life issues, secure borders, public safety, etc. DeSantis has even attacked Trump for his First Step Act (despite its low recidivism), describing it as a “jailbreak bill,” when he should instead be attacking Democrat prosecutors for their terrible policies, including zero bail, that hurt the cause of real criminal justice reform that conservatives have long championed.

DeSantis hasn’t laid a glove on Trump because he’s throwing punches aimlessly, flailing out with unbelievable attacks, as if Trump voters will leave Trump based on issues. DeSantis never will get the loyalists who believe Trump is the savior of Western civilization.

But there is a second group that would leave Trump for DeSantis if they thought Trump would lose against the Democrats. DeSantis and the other Republicans should focus on Democrats, not just Biden. As I’ve repeatedly predicted, neither Trump nor Biden will be a party nominee, and Kamala Harris will go first.

DeSantis’ Paradox

Here’s the paradox: In order to win the Republican nomination, DeSantis must not alienate but instead reach out to general election voters, especially the increasing number of independents who will determine the next president. Many Trump voters would switch from Trump to DeSantis. That’s because they already are restless about Trump’s volatility and baggage and apprehensive that Trump would again make the election a referendum about himself, not the Democrat administration record. DeSantis underestimates Trump’s infinite capacity for self-destruction. In his quixotic journey to out-Trump Trump, DeSantis turns off the voters he needs in general election polls that, ironically, would impact the Republican primary polls and the primary elections.

Like the Republicans who underperformed in the congressional midterms, DeSantis fails to connect with voters on the Big-Elephant-in-the-Room — inflation, notably the permanent increases in the cost of living. Republicans keep hyping investigations and even prematurely raising the specter of a Biden impeachment. They should let investigations run their course instead of announcing how they will conclude. As for impeachment, that’s organic, not preordained. Besides, let the Democrats replace Kamala first. (RELATED: Kamala… They Are Coming for You)

DeSantis must dominate on inflation because Republicans fail to obsess about it and tie it permanently to Democrats. Republicans need to adopt a populist stance and blame Biden and Democrats for high-interest rates that make it tougher for Americans to afford a mortgage, car loan, or even to pay off credit card debt, that force up the cost of doing business, which is then passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Biden and the Democrats (or whoever runs in place of Biden) must own inflation and its damage to the American psyche.  

The narrative must be that Biden’s — or rather, the Democrats’ — irresponsible and wasteful government spending caused massive inflation, that because Biden would not reduce federal spending, we have higher interest rates. This requires that DeSantis focus on repetition, not on making news on other off-the-wall topics, such as his announcement that he would appoint Robert F. Kennedy to a position. DeSantis is not on message. (READ MORE: Biden Must Own Inflation and High Interest Rates)

As I’ve emphasized, even if inflation subsides, the overall price level will remain high and not reduce to the status quo ante, and all this causes insecurity and worry. The concern is not ideological but intimate and need not dissipate.  DeSantis doesn’t grasp the Big Picture. You establish credibility on that angst — the anxiety over the future, the feeling of helplessness against the higher cost of living, the growing perception among parents that their children will have a tougher road ahead — and then broaden angst to include whether a boy should be in a high school girls’ locker room.

Consider this oddity: If DeSantis — though clearly in second place to Trump — continues on his present destructive path, unless he scores a home run in the first debate, he could become a stalking horse for lesser candidates. Past debates produced rapid and seismic shifts in polling — Herman Cain and Ben Carson each quickly jumped in polls but then proved unable to sustain momentum. Republicans are quick to support a black conservative, and Tim Scott, who should resolve any of his negatives sooner rather than later, is a Happy Warrior.

Most of the candidates are roughly as conservative as Trump, or they project born-again conservatism. Novice Vivek Ramaswamy is quick on his feet and may already be in third place. Former federal prosecutor Gov. Chris Christie, who is also skilled at sound bites, is best positioned to exploit both Trump’s indictments and the Biden family corruption. Many see Tim Scott as a possible vice-presidential nominee, but others theorize that if Trump drops out, he would never endorse DeSantis, Christie, Pence, Haley, et al., but likely would endorse Scott for president.

We’re heading into uncharted territory. In a debate, Trump and Christie could get personal in mutually assured destruction, leaving others to pick up the pieces. Kennedy’s populism could grow his support among Democrats sufficiently to enable another Democrat to replace a retiring Biden, whose mental and physical health are wild cards. In the general election, a Trump–Biden race would almost certainly assure a third-party candidate. New disclosures about COVID origins and the safety of COVID vaccines could reshape 2024. But regardless of potential changes, DeSantis must reshape his campaign to have any hope of winning.