Covid vaccines, an issue DeSantis should soft pedal

These days, it’s good to be Ron DeSantis. He just won reelection in a landslide. As Bill points out, he’s the only major national politician with a net favorability rating.

In most recent polls, Republicans prefer him to Donald Trump as their 2024 nominee. And unlike Trump, he’s ahead of Joe Biden in (way too early) polling of the general election.

Accordingly, DeSantis hardly needs free political advice. But here goes.

DeSantis recently held a 90-minute “covid accountability roundtable” during which he announced that he’s asked the Florida Supreme Court to set up a statewide grand jury to investigate "crimes and wrongdoing" related to the covid-19 shots. DeSantis held the roundtable not far from the home of Donald Trump who touts rapid development of the covid vaccines as one of his major accomplishments.

Perhaps the location was a coincidence. It may be, however, that DeSantis is considering making the vaccines an issue in a campaign against Trump if, as expected, DeSantis decides to launch one.

In my view, for what it’s worth, it would be a mistake for DeSantis to campaign this way. Not because I agree with Trump that developing the vaccines so quickly was a major accomplishment — although I do agree. And not because there aren’t things about the vaccine one might fruitfully investigate. Maybe there are. Any effort to cover up vaccine side effects, for example, seems like a fit subject for investigation.

The reasons why I think it would be a mistake for DeSantis to campaign on the vaccine issue are political. Consider these two questions: (1) Does DeSantis need to make vaccines a campaign issue to defeat Trump? and (2) Would making vaccines a campaign issue help or hurt DeSantis in a general election?

My answers are “no” and “hurt.”

Even assuming that Trump’s support hasn’t cratered by this time next year, DeSantis won’t need the vaccine issue in primary showdowns because he can get to the right of the former president on covid without discussing vaccines.

Trump largely turned federal covid policy over to the reviled Dr. Fauci. He supported lockdowns early on. DeSantis was critical of lockdowns and reopened Florida fairly quickly compared to most other jurisdictions.

Because most Republican dissatisfaction with covid policy revolves around lockdowns, not vaccines, DeSantis’ anti-lockdown policy gives him the upper hand in a covid debate with Trump. He doesn’t need to discuss vaccines.

Trump, of course, will discuss them. Thus, DeSantis will be tempted to attack him on this issue. But if I’m correct that DeSantis can best Trump without disparaging Trump’s vaccine achievement, the governor’s focus should be on setting himself up for the general election, not on countering Trump point-by-point.

In my view, this focus militates in favor of staying away from the vaccine issue. Studies find that covid vaccines have saved millions of American lives and prevented many millions of hospitalization.

Are these studies reliable? I don’t know. For political purposes, the point is that they exist, their findings are plausible, and most Americans were happy to be vaccinated. I was, and still am.

Accordingly, I don’t see how it would help DeSantis to be critical of covid vaccines or to deny that their rapid development under Trump was a positive development. Instead, I see doing this as providing ammunition the Democrats and their media allies can use to attack the governor.

Already, the Dems and the media are portraying DeSantis as an anti-vaxxer. We see this in the Washington Post as well as NBC News and CNN.

This is part of an emerging anti-DeSantis theme — that in his own way, the Florida governor is as bad as, or even worse than, Trump. If DeSantis wants to maintain that +6 favorability rating or at least keep it far away from Trump’s -15.6, he should abstain from taking unnecessary positions that Democrats and the media can use to support the “even worse than Trump” theme.

This doesn’t mean backing away from substantive policy fights. It doesn’t even mean being completely silent about blatant excesses in vaccination policy.

It does mean not trying to get to the right of Trump by expressing skepticism about the general efficacy of covid vaccines in preventing deaths and hospitalizations or by downplaying Trump’s success in facilitating the development of these vaccines.

DeSantis will take enough fire for being a hardcore, effective conservative without fueling claims that he’s conspiracy minded, “anti-science,” and so forth.