Or sanctimonious right wing NY Times op-ed writers either This, from Eric Levitz in NY Magazine, is right on about Ron DeSantis: Ron DeSantis is the popular governor of a racially diverse state with a substantial Democratic population. He is also a reactionary. In the New York Times, Pamela Paul argues that liberals have a lot to learn from these two facts. The columnist implores her fellow Democrats to avoid writing DeSantis off as “another unelectable right-wing lunatic unfit for national office.” Rather than dismissing the Florida governor and his supporters as “racist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic,” Paul advises liberals to reflect on his political strengths. She explains that, unlike Donald Trump, DeSantis was a star student at an Ivy League school. It’s therefore likely that he “knows what he’s doing” when he scandalizes progressives. He is a savvy political actor, if his approval rating is any guide. Democrats should therefore seek to learn from his example. It isn’t clear precisely what Paul believes we should learn. She notes that many voters approved of DeSantis’s denigration of all manner of anti-COVID policies (including vaccination, which imposes few costs on personal freedom as it dramatically reduces COVID fatalities). She concedes that it’s worth condemning his decision to send desperate migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in a misbegotten bid to expose liberals’ supposed hypocrisy. But she observes that many Hispanic Floridians actually approved of the policy. DeSantis’s Stop WOKE Act, which prohibits discussion of sensitive racial issues in the classroom, may be antithetical to free speech, but Paul insists some parents are “tired of racial and ethnic divisiveness and the overt politicization…