Democrats need to become the party of building things

Ron DeSantis emailed me the other day — me and hundreds of thousands of others, I imagine. “Our country is currently facing a great threat,” the Florida governor began. I assumed that — with inflation soaring, gas prices still sky-high, and the economy in danger of slowing down — he would hit hard on those themes. But these bread-and-butter issues were not mentioned anywhere in the email. “A new enemy has emerged from the shadows,” he continued, “that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state, and country, that you and I would hardly recognize.” As you might by now have guessed, “This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob.”

Some of this is a clever effort by DeSantis to tap into the base of the Republican Party and outflank Donald Trump on the kinds of issues that propelled Trump to the Republican nomination in 2016. And a recent New Hampshire poll of likely Republican primary voters that had DeSantis neck and neck with Trump should worry the former president. The governor has much less name recognition than Trump — and yet, in a bellwether state, the Floridian has caught up.

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