“Let’s just be honest, he energized Democrats — you could have John Kennedy walk through the door right now, and he wouldn’t energize Democrats as much as Donald Trump does,” warns Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and he’s obviously right.

DeSantis may be having trouble moving up in the 2024 primary polls, but he’s still got his thumb on how Americans think — including the ones on the other side of the political spectrum.

You don’t move from barely winning an election in 2018 to a landslide victory in 2022 without such insight.

His point — in an appeal to GOP voters in Tallahassee — was that Joe Biden didn’t so much win the 2020 election as Donald Trump lost it, by infuriating enough Americans that they took the trouble to vote against him.

And yes, it’s possible that enough voters will be turned off by Biden’s disastrous misrule that they’ll opt for Trump next year if he’s the GOP nominee.

But the fact is that, even with the backing of his devoted base, The Donald still puts up general-election numbers far lower than the leader for the GOP nomination should in this environment.

Polls show voters preferring Republicans over Democrats generally by huge margins on the economy, foreign policy and immigration, but even the best polls for Trump show a far tighter race against Biden; the incumbent actually led 51% to 49% in the same poll last week.

The only way you win on every key issue but still lose the election is to be hopelessly toxic.

Democrats’ all-holds-barred legal war on Trump may be rallying the GOP base to side with him in early polls on the nomination, but when Republicans begin focusing on the best hope to beat Biden and start turning the country around, the primary race will start to look a lot different.