REPUBLICANISM IN 2022 IS MORE OF A DICK THING THAN EVER

Here are some disheartening (though unsurprising) survey numbers from Siena College:

A new poll is showing Gov. Ron DeSantis with an 8-point lead on Democratic challenger Charlie Crist....

DeSantis leads with 49%, while Crist earns 41%.

Siena's Don Levy notes:

“Additionally, DeSantis has a solid 50-43% favorability rating, including being viewed favorably by a majority of independents, compared to Crist’s 34-39% favorability rating, with more than a quarter of the electorate not having an opinion about him, including 20% of Democrats.”

So the guy who's made it his life's work to be as unlikable as possible is considered the likable one, while the candidate who tries to come off as a nice guy is seen as the unlikable one (or doesn't make an impression at all).

This might be the explanation for the numbers:

“There is a gender gap. By 24 points, men support DeSantis, 57-33%, while a plurality of women, 48-42%, support Crist,” Levy said.

Gender gaps have been a feature of American politics for decades, but this one is rather massive -- Crist is up 6 among women, while DeSantis is up 24 among men. And that's just on the question of candidate preference -- when you look at the favorability numbers, DeSantis is up by 27 among men (60%-33%) and down by 10 among women (42%-52%). Crist is down 17 among men (29%-46%) and up 5 among women (38%-33%).

In the year of the Dobbs decision, you'd expect Democrats to be doing better with women than men. But Crist is only slighly ahead among women, and only seen a bit more favorably. DeSantis is noticely underwater with women, but he's massively ahead among men, who view him favorably by a nearly two-to-one margin.

So is this really about abortion? It seems to me that it's about testosterone.

There were similar results in a Quinnipiac poll of the Texas governor's race that was released last week. Overall, Greg Abbott leads Beto O'Rourke 53%-46%, according to the poll. O'Rourke's lead among women is 11 (55% to 44%). Abbott's lead among men is 30 (64% to 34%). (I'm not sure how that adds up to a 7-point race, but those are the numbers Quinnipiac provided.)

In both races, Democrats are noticeably ahead among women, but among men they're being crushed. And that's really what Republicanism is in 2022. If cruelty is the point, along with sheer obnoxiousness, it's because cruelty and obnoxiousness turn men on.