Aggressive offence and man-on-man coverage. How will Trump take on DeSantis?

Do you remember the guy who “won the pandemic”? Yeah, he’s running.

That is not a new statement and much has already been written about the possibility of firstly, Trump running, secondly, someone challenging Trump, and finally, how on earth that would go down.

Can DeSantis and his team really take on Trump, though?

It is hard to remember, but there was a time before the electorate had cast a vote when even Trump (yes, even Trump) had to slightly monitor what he was saying. Generating TV ratings was all that mattered, but there was, some time in the distant past, a chance they wouldn’t translate into votes.

During the primaries, Trump was…well, himself. These elections are brutal. There is nothing novel about that. Nasty language is used by everyone, including those trying to beat Trump. This is not to say Trump wasn’t typically uncouth (because he was), or to say that I am in anyway sympathetic to the way Trump was treated (because I am not). It is to say, rather, that it is framed within the relative mainstream of the way political rivals referred to each other at the time.

In 2015, Lindsey Graham called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot”, Cruz accused him of being a “pathological liar”. Mick…