Ron DeSantis Debates His Grievances
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.
Why did they do it? What was the angle?
A presidential candidate such as Ron DeSantis usually would never waste an evening only weeks before the make-or-break early primaries debating a telegenic noncompetitor for a TV pseudo-event. Yet there was DeSantis onstage in Georgia, creating content for Fox News, opposite Gavin Newsom, the sharp-tongued California governor who has publicly ridiculed DeSantis for months.
For the Democrat Newsom, the angle is pretty straightforward. He’s a presidential aspirant trying to elbow his way past a serving vice president to establish himself as his party’s heir apparent to the 81-year-old incumbent. Newsom accepted the Fox invitation with onethis guy. That thought probably won’t do him any good in the current cycle, when Democrats will surely renominate Joe Biden barring some catastrophic health event. But it could do Newsom a lot of good in future cycles—especially if the Biden-Harris ticket should lose in 2024.
