Monkey Business

Days later, left media are still whining about DeSantis's warnings against "monkeying around".

GOPsters are responding by shifting to repeated shouts of "socialist agenda!", "high taxes!", "Bernie Sanders!", and now even "Venezuela!" to attack Gillum.

DeSantis: Gillum wants to turn Florida 'into Venezuela'

"I would say it's very untraditional for Florida, [though] not anything to do with me, I'm a solid conservative in the Reagan tradition and I've been supportive of the president's agenda," DeSantis said.

In 1965, Ronald Reagan told America that passing the bill to create Medicare would end American freedom and impose communism.

So, yes, DeSantis is indeed in that tradition.

The crazy on the right has been around for a long, long time.

And it has included movement conservatism for all of that long, long time.

"This Andrew Gillum, he's on the far-left socialist fringe," DeSantis continued. 

"He's a Bernie Sanders, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez type candidate."

"If you have a guy like this enacting a socialist agenda it's going to absolutely destroy all the progress that Florida has made," he added. 

"He wants to turn Florida in to Venezuela."

And why are the major media playing along, joining into the GOP lie that the Gillum/Sanders agenda is "far left" and even "extreme left"?

Seen this?

This is the new mainstream, people.

The new center.

70% of Americans now support Medicare-for-all

The vast majority of Americans, 70 percent, now support Medicare-for-all, otherwise known as single-payer health care, according to a new Reuters survey. 

That includes 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans. 

Only 20 percent of Americans say they outright oppose the idea.

Free college tuition is equally popular, though abolishing ICE is still an idea - and not really a good one - whose time has not come.

But even the Guardian is still calling such agenda items "left wing".

Democratic nominee defends leftwing policies and calls for Trump-endorsed opponent to ‘rise above’ racist attacks.

. . . .

Gillum, the 39-year-old mayor of Tallahassee, was the surprise winner of the Democratic nominating contest. 

He is endorsed by Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. 

Ocasio-Cortez, a young leftwinger from New York, won a primary in June and will run for election in November.

Trump greeted Gillum’s win with a tweet, saying “a failed socialist mayor … who has allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his city … is not what Florida wants or needs!”

Speaking to Catsimatidis, DeSantis duly highlighted Gillum’s support for leftwing priorities such as “Medicare for all” and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). 

The mayor has also promised to suspend the death penalty and has a low rating from the National Rifle Association.

. . . .

Gillum also defended his record on crime in Tallahassee and said he wanted to reform Ice, rather than abolish it, as part of opposition to Trump policies he said were “wholly unAmerican”.