Ron DeSantis tells donors re-election will be ‘uphill battle.’ Does he believe it?

In the genre of fundraising solicitations, poetic license is sometimes exercised, as exemplified by a recent pitch letter from the Ron DeSantis re-election campaign.

“I have an uphill battle ahead of me,” the Governor warns donors in a first-person appeal.

“I have an uphill battle ahead of me because they aren’t just going to sit back and let me win. They’re going to use every tool in their war chest to take me down and do away with our freedom agenda,” DeSantis adds, urging a contribution of “any amount to my campaign NOW so that I can continue this uphill battle against the Democrat Machine.”

Interestingly, the Governor’s remarks outside the medium of donor pitches seem to take the “Democrat Machine” less seriously as a peer competitor.

During a Thursday night town hall on the Fox News Channel where host Laura Ingraham compared DeSantis to Elvis Presley, DeSantis diminished the Democratic threat, predicting that Republicans would continue to press their registration advantage.

Ingraham asked DeSantis to address stories of national Democrats “conceding” elections in Florida by not investing as if it is still competitive for them, a question that led to DeSantis to predict not just a red wave, but a crimson tsunami driven by the formidable DeSantis political machine.

“We are going to have the biggest turnout that any Republican has ever had in the state of Florida in a Governor’s race in November, and that’s going to help people up and down the ballot,” DeSantis predicted.

“I think the Democratic Party in this state is dispirited. What do they stand for? It’s basically a woke train wreck of a party,” DeSantis added.

From polls to fundraising to prediction markets, the odds right now are in the Governor’s favor. Yet the “uphill battle” language would suggest DeSantis wants his donors to believe otherwise.