If Ron DeSantis wants to win against Donald Trump — and indeed, against Joe Biden in the 2024 general election — he needs to get a better ground game. He needs to do more events and meet more voters.
His campaign needs a positive emphasis on kitchen table issues such as crime, restoring energy independence, and taming high food and energy costs. He needs to focus on uniting the country and making Americans proud of their country.
His emphasis on the “War on Woke” leaves many Americans who have no idea what being woke even means scratching their head. It’s not what people say, it’s how they say it. Donald Trump is an adept marketeer because he knows how to keep things simple, at an eighth-grade reading level.
Ron DeSantis Needs Simple, Positive Uniting Message
He should look back to Barack Obama’s speech from the 2008 Democratic National Convention about “pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into red states and blue states” for cues on retooling his “War on Woke.” What is wokeness? Wokeness is dividing Americans against each other based on race, sex, class, and national origin in an effort to make the nation weaker and more divided.
If DeSantis wants to take on the spirit of the age, he needs to discuss how the Democrats have chosen to pit white against black, male against female, and immigrants against the native-born in a bid to divide and conquer.
Obama is and was a great rhetorician.
“We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?” Obama said in 2008.
Obama’s speech resonated with the values of middle America, even as he secretly disdained those values.
The real Obama divided our nation to a degree not seen since the Vietnam War. His embrace of the most radical elements that sought racial retribution and scapegoating has been given even more gasoline by the Biden administration. DeSantis can differentiate himself from Trump by enunciating an optimistic message that reassures middle America, like Obama did in 2008 and how Reagan did in 1980.
The Obama-Biden Democrats talk about “equity” which means bringing those at the top to the level of the most mediocre in society, instead of bringing those at the bottom to the level of excellence at the top.
Reagan’s 1981 speech at the NAACP Annual Convention shows the best way to frame the issue because so-called wokeness is about inflaming hatred against people based on the color of their skin and on those things that made America great. Hate is hate regardless of where it comes from.
“A few isolated groups in the backwater of American life still hold perverted notions of what America is all about. Recently in some places in the nation there’s been a disturbing reoccurrence of bigotry and violence. If I may, from the platform of this organization, known for its tolerance, I would like to address a few remarks to those groups who still adhere to senseless racism and religious prejudice, to those individuals who persist in such hateful behavior,” Reagan said.
“You are the ones who are out of step with our society. You are the ones who willfully violate the meaning of the dream that is America. And this country, because of what it stands for, will not stand for your conduct.”
Making America Safe and Secure
DeSantis should emphasize how he would make Americans safer and more secure than Donald Trump did. The former president spent his first term under constant internal siege from the federal bureaucracy, which distracted him from being as effective as he could have been.
He needs to look at what the social psychologist Abraham Maslow pointed out. Human beings have a hierarchy of needs, beginning with the needs for safety and security. He needs a positive message about how he will make America safe and secure in contrast with Trump.
He needs to keep his messages as simple as possible, targeted at an eighth-grade level, like Trump.
Whether we’re talking about preventing World War III or making Americans safe, DeSantis needs to have a positive message that is not, “Vote for me. I’m not Donald Trump.”
He should also talk about how a DeSantis presidency would be a return to normal in contrast with Trump’s impeachments and indictments, which Americans have tired of.
Ronald DeSantis should look at some of Ronald Reagan’s speeches to learn how to hone his message.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
From 19FortyFive
The Second American Civil War Has Begun
