Desantis has the veneer of sanity, and actually has a clue regarding how to make things worse. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Trump just flails about and expects underlings to figure it out.
My only hope is that people as morally insane as Trump are rare, and there may be a correlation between his sociopathic traits, and how seemingly incompetent he is.
What this hopefully means in practice is that even though this time around he will surround himself with yes-men over which he will have more control, few of them will be precisely like Trump and so not immune to actual concern for the future, and to Trump's surprise will not all follow his insane ideas without question, as Trump clearly wants everyone to do. He can't rule on his own. He does need some people, and people needing people requires at least a semblance of regard for others.
In this same way, even his stacked Supreme Court I think will still be likely to put America itself ahead of Trump and a victory that would make a mockery of their own institution, the constitution, and just general common sense.
It's only a shred of hope, but one which might enable civil society to survive another Trump presidency, and if we're really lucky, avoid it.
I know nothing of DeSantis outside he's running. Can you or someone share a tl;dr. It's hard for me to imagine someone worse than Trump. But then again, never thought we'd have someone worse than George W...
The short version is that he's gutted public services in Florida and made life worse for nearly everyone there - while engaging in massive culture war bullshit to distract his base
Not to downplay that, it includes laws and discourse such as 'Dont Say Gay' and attacking school curriculums that are incredibly damaging. He's the guy that flew refugees to Martha's Vineyard to 'make a point'
Desantis is basically a competent Trump. They both have terrible ideas but Desantis would be able to pull it off because he already has in ruining Florida.