GOP presidential candidate draws renewed criticism after suggesting slavery helped African Americans develop skills such as being a blacksmith

Archive link: https://archive.ph/JX8Gb

  • donuts
    21•1 year ago

    Ok, putting aside the disgusting stupidity of this claim for a second…

    … what exactly is the political play here? I just can’t see how this is a smart argument or a winning strategy.

    • cassetti
      14•1 year ago

      Desantis is vying for political points that he can use nationally. He and his campaign think it’ll score them points that might help them prove to be more “Trumpy” than other candidates.

      • donuts
        9•1 year ago

        Honestly, while it wouldn’t totally surprise me to have Republicans sink to an even lower low… I’m just not sure that there’s a large contingent of national voters for who “actually slavery was pretty great for black people” is an important issues or a winning message.

        I feel like it’s ultimately suburban voters who tip the scale in a general election, and defending slavery isn’t probably the main issue on their mind. And for the GOP primary, there’s no chance that he pulls anything meaningful away from the Trump cult with this shit. It just seems so stupid.

        • @Mirshe
          6•1 year ago

          You’d be entirely shocked at how racist suburban voters can be, and how open a lot of them have become in recent years.

    • @MelonTheMan
      9•1 year ago

      It’s all about pushing the needle and normalizing this shit. They can do whatever they want in Florida so they test drive their facist ideologies there.

      I don’t think Desantis is being tooled as a viable candidate, just a useful ton of dead weight to push the scales further right.

    • @80085
      6•1 year ago

      I don’t think this, in particular, is about the campaign. It’s about ideology. I don’t think DeSantis is a grifter that only cares about getting elected or getting people to like him (unlike Trump). I think he is an actual pseudo-fascist. He is implementing all these changes to reshape Florida in his image. In this example, his goal is to have kids to grow up thinking all the poor black people are poor because they are not good workers or people, which is probably what he believes, or worse.