What went wrong with Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign? You can list many arguable mistakes, as you can with any campaign, and you can add, as some reporters have, that the candidate was not likable or good at retail campaigning — which mostly reflected reporters’ personal dislike of DeSantis or resentment at his refusal to schmooze what he considered unfriendly press.
But I think his campaign’s failure came down to two things. One is that Republican voters rallied to Donald Trump in the face of what they regarded (correctly, in my view) as politically motivated and legally unjustified indictments. I made that point in columns last November and December and once again in my column after DeSantis’s second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses last week.
