After Trump, DeSantis?

 We all know -- or at least know that we have been firmly told -- that women just don't like Donald Trump's alpha-male behavior. The mean tweets, an ordinary manifestation of the male Culture of Insult, is just too exhausting.

But, of course, women expect to be protected. So if they determine, two by two in their Kaffee Klatsch meetings of the women's global conspiracy, that President Biden doesn't protect them, then I fearlessly predict that they will have nothing to say about a mean-tweeting Trump in 2024.

But whatabout Ron DeSantis? My liberal neighbors already hate him, so there's that. So the only question is whether they and their liberal friends are going to be hating him as much as they hated Donald Trump. I guess we need to keep track of this by polling the nation's mental-health professionals for an upsurge in CNN/MSNBC-watcher pre-traumatic stress syndrome in the months and years ahead.

(By the way, whatabout the mental health of disappointed Trump supporters? Does nobody in the mental health community care about them? Or are Trumpists merely sub-human deplorables that don't come to the notice of fully-qualified mental health professionals?)

But I have this weird feeling that, with regard to Trump, we are been-there-done-that. As I look back to the early presidential debates of 2016, when I was a Cruz supporter, there is no doubt that Donald Trump, by rolling over all the rules about being a "nice Republican," really gave me a buzz. He showed us all what could be done in the public square. The US political world will never be the same.

Now I think that Ron DeSantis is shaping up as Donald Trump without the mean tweets. Yesterday he was featured mentioning the "Brandon administration.¨ It was clearly fully planned and worked out, and he talked several minutes about the Let's Go Brandon phenomenon, explaining its origin for anyone that didn't know. And boy, did his audience absolutely loooove it.

See, I think that Let's Go Brandon is absolute political gold. First of all, it avoids straight up vulgarity, so the women of the world don't need to be offended. In fact, I suspect that the phrase rather neatly appeals to women, because it is indirect. It makes the point, but it stays "nice."

And I'd say that, overall, Ron DeSantis passes on the "likability" front.

Let's put it another way. Donald Trump was the guy that helped us storm the barricades of the Deep State back in the day; he was the leader of the Forlorn Hope, crashing through a breach in the walls of the ruling class.

But now, I suspect, we don't need a rough tough leader that stakes everything on "once more unto the breach." We need a nice affable guy with a will of iron that will outthink and outflank and outstrategize our dear liberal friends.

Is Ron DeSantis that man? Who knows? That's why we have campaigns.

But I tell you this. When I experience Ron DeSantis I experience a guy trying to look around the corner and think where he needs to be tomorrow or next month. I think that his COVID strategy is pure gold, and the Democratic Party strategy of lockdowns and masks and vax mandates will eventually crash and burn. I think that any sensible politician with a strategic mind is thinking about where we end up in a year or so. Whereas I think that the Dems are merely reacting and pandering to the women that expect to be protected.

Earth to Democrats. When women expect to be protected they have no idea how. They just want to be told by a Maaan that everything is under control.

Here's the problem with the Dem lack-of-strategy. If and when it turns out that the reactive lockdown-mask-vax policy was a stupid mistake, the women of America are not going to say, well, at least his heart was in the right place. They are just going to feel that the Democrats did not protect them and look for another protector.