Joy Behar had a confession to make about a certain presidential candidate. “I think about him sometimes when I’m lying in bed and have nothing else to think about,” Behar said in an offhand comment on ABC’s “The View.”
The object of Behar’s nocturnal mind wanderings? Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Behar added that Gov. DeSantis’s campaign is a “non-starter” because he “can’t get past this … MAGA base,” which is loyal to President Trump. She then advised DeSantis to “just get out of the race” because “you’re not gonna win.”
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Behar’s comments lend themselves to two different threads of analysis.
First, there is Behar’s prediction and subsequent advice for Gov. DeSantis’s campaign.
Whether or not DeSantis should “get out of the race” because he’s “not gonna win” remains to be seen. There is no doubt, however, that DeSantis faces steep odds with the MAGA base.
DeSantis must do more than avoid alienating President Trump’s millions of supporters. The Florida governor must convince those voters to abandon a man whom they perceive as already having been abandoned by so many shameless political insiders.
Indeed, Trump serves as a symbol of his disaffected voters’ mounting alienation from a rotten political class infested with career opportunists. MAGA voters’ belief that Trump has been treated shabbily by those who pretended to support him constitutes a powerful bond between the former president and the people who love him.
Does DeSantis have a shot at beating Trump?
Yes: 33% (2 Votes)
No: 67% (4 Votes)
On the other hand, Behar’s comments might have given DeSantis an unintentional boost. The mere fact of Behar’s dismissal could persuade some MAGA voters to take a more open-minded look at the Florida governor.
This brings us to a second and more ruminative thread of analysis.
Conservatives might ask, “Why should anyone care what Joy Behar thinks about public affairs?” This is a good question, of course, but the ruminations run even deeper.
Here one is tempted to digress into the question of how civilizations collapse. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, for instance, believed that societies do decay — that they have life cycles similar to organisms, and that affluence born of commerce marks the final stage of decline. They also predicted that a republic could not survive prolonged hostility between an affluent few and a disillusioned many.
There is something about “The View” that brings such thoughts to mind.
Perhaps it is the hosts’ blind hatred toward Trump and his supporters.
Perhaps it is the flippancy with which the hosts reacted to the Balenciaga scandal.
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Perhaps I overstate the case, but I suspect I am not alone in regarding “The View” as a peculiar symptom of societal collapse: its frivolousness, its hostility to traditional values, and above all its anti-populist, pro-establishment voice that tells viewers, “We’re part of the club, and you’re not.”
The segment featuring Behar’s comment on DeSantis offers one useful illustration. For several minutes, Behar’s co-hosts complained about his glitchy Twitter announcement. At one point, co-host Sara Haines made the predictable observation that presidential hopefuls want to make a splash when announcing their candidacies. This prompted fellow co-host Sunny Hostin to exclaim, “Remember Joe Biden’s? Soul of the Nation!”
Hostin’s rapturous reminder of Biden’s campaign-announcement theme, which he revived in a vicious speech several months before the 2022 midterm elections, represents the concentrated essence of affluent modern leftism.
It makes no difference that Biden has demonstrated catastrophic incompetence or that he is a sock puppet for warmongers. What matters to Hostin is that Biden’s bilious words reassure her of her exalted place in the regime, allowing her to feel superior to the MAGA rabble.
MAGA voters know this about Hostin, Behar, the establishment media and nearly all of the entertainment industry.
In short, if DeSantis hopes to win MAGA support, he should relish hostile treatment from “The View.”
