Rubio, Demings And The Limits Of Delusion

On Florida Senate

One of the dumbest arguments that a certain kind of F1 fan always makes is that George Russell is actually rubbish, and undeserving of his Mercedes seat. The argument is crap, but it is superficially appealing - it took George 2.5 seasons to get his first Top 10 result for Williams, and in three seasons in the car, he got 4 points finishes - and one of them is pseudo-fake anyways, because it was the “race” at Spa in 2021. It’s a very superficially intelligent argument, because George had substantially worse results in his car for three years than a lot of drivers who people think of as worse than him.

The problem with the argument is that he had the worst car on the grid (or, worst non-Haas division, especially in 2021), and the car was a true shitbox. Him getting a front row start at Spa, or a 3rd place start at Sochi, or making it into Q3 for 3 of 4 races in a row, were incredible results given the context - and Russell won the minor league F2 Championship in his rookie season against great competition, when the cars weren’t so unequal. Anyone with a brain knows George is quite the talent, but the superficial analysis allows people to make the dumbest fucking claims.

And when I hear people talking about Val Demings having a chance, I can’t help but think of the people trying to tell me George is actually bad.

…

Val Demings won’t win.

Val Demings won’t even get particularly close.

This is not up for debate.

No, I don’t give a fuck that there have been two partisan Dem polls and now a University of North Florida poll showing here. No, I don’t care that there’s been a Dobbs effect. No, I don’t care that she has a lot of money. No, I don’t care that Resist Twitter hates Marco. It’s not going to happen.

The case for Rubio being in something resembling danger can’t be made by national polling or the national environment, where a neutral environment points to a Florida result around a 8% lead. Throw in the fact that Rubio is a known over performer from 2016, and the fact that even if DeSantis has problems with Cubans compared to Trump (by no means is this a statement he will, but even if), Rubio will at minimum run even with Trump.

The case can be maybe made if you’re a fan of Demings, but honestly she’s never struck me as particular impressive. Is the fact that she’s a cop potentially going to inoculate her from some of the problems that could, in theory, come from older white voters being scared of a Black candidate who could be painted as a radical. If I’m trying to make the case for her, I could see the case for her being able to run even with Rubio’s strengths, turning this into a battle of environment and not candidate quality. But the idea that she could outrun the state’s increasing red hue is insanity.

Florida voted 8 points right of the nation in 2018 and 2020, a fact that a certain type of Democrat doesn’t want to engage with. I get the appeal of Blue Florida - giving up on a large amount of Democratic voters doesn’t feel right, I know. But it’s a pipe dream in the short term, and the problem is, denialism isn’t a strategy.

As someone who wrote a profane and forceful column telling Democrats that Florida was fine and that the only reason people were panicking about it was the name the Friday before 2020, this hasn’t been my view. I do believe I even wrote in that column that if Florida was called South Georgia, that everyone would rightly be calm about it and fucking relax. This insight was correct - the name Florida is what causes the irrationality. There wasn’t nearly the same panic about North Carolina as Florida, and based on the public evidence, there was about the same reason to be panicked - which is to say, little, except for the chance of a polling miss, which obviously came.

Here the irrationality still exists because of the name - Florida is this Democratic Golden Goose, this thing long chased after but almost never gotten. Of course the passion for the state is irrational - it hasn’t elected a Democratic Governor since before I was born. Democrats have won a popular majority - Senate, Governorship, Presidency, or a majority of the state’s Congressional Delegation - 5 times in Florida this century. They’ve done it 5 times in Arizona since 2018. It’s not a purple state - it’s a red state that had a Democratic Senator for a couple terms and that happened to vote for Obama twice. In terms of win equity when it actually matters, Florida might as well be zero.

The reason I started this with George Russell is not just that I am a fanboy, but because his track record before getting the Mercedes seat was an act of difficult, contextual analysis showing that he was pretty good, but a superficial analysis showing he’s crap. In 2019, he came 20th of 20 drivers, the only one not to earn a Top 10 finish. In 2020, he did get one - a 9th place - but he did so in a Mercedes, and in 2021 it took 11 races to finally get one in a Williams. Based on just the results, the fact he replaced Valtteri Bottas was absurd.

But when you think of this with any context, that Williams was never good enough, and the fact that George got that Williams into Q2 reliably in 2020 and 2021, that he got it into Q3 in 2021 was a minor miracle. And in that Mercedes ride, he was winning, until he got fucked by things outside of his control - twice. It was obvious that he was out driving the car, and everyone with a brain knew that the bad results were an act not of failure, but bad luck.

Here, a superficial analysis of the polls in Florida would suggest that Demings can win - and unlike in Ohio, there’s a public poll showing Demings winning - but we know it’s wrong. There are legitimate, real competitive races that need our attention and energy, and pretending that this is on that list is political malfeasance. I’m sorry, but it is.

Val Demings isn’t going to win. She just isn’t. Pretending otherwise doesn’t change that basic fact.