Dem
51
GOP
49
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is apparently going to use "Florida is where woke goes to die" as his campaign slogan. He repeats it over and over and used it in his inaugural address. The only problem is people don't know what "woke" is and certainly not whether it was in good health or poor health before it got to Florida. To find out more about this woke business, the Swing Voter Project ran a focus group of Florida swing voters to find out what they thought about wokeness. In this context, a swing voter is someone who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. The results were somewhat surprising.
Most of the focus group members didn't know what "woke" meant. And the ones that thought they did disagreed with one another about the meaning. Kate (42) said: "I just heard it used so many different ways. I honestly kind of just ignore it to be honest." Emily (33) said: "When I think of woke, I mean the past." Steven (59) said a woke person is "Ignorant, really, really ignorant—the people that come up with things that have nothing to do with anything."
After failing to get an agreed-upon definition of "woke," the moderator played a recording of the part of DeSantis' inaugural speech in which he discussed what's wrong with being woke. Chris (47) said: "I like DeSantis but ... it's almost like he's fighting against an invisible boogeyman in a way." Jason (51) said: "I think he's pandering to his base." Katie said: "My whole problem is the separation of church and state. He wants to say that we're going to use reality, we're going to use facts, and we're going to use actual information. But half of the stuff he is talking about is just his form of reality."
If DeSantis goes national with this stuff, it is likely to confuse a lot of people and may not work as well as he is expecting. Democrats are going to counter him with: "He's off his rocker, fighting this boogeyman that nobody even understands. (V)