Let me ask you this:
Trump has been the leader of the Republican Party on a national level since his election in 2016. Are the Democrats today more powerful or less powerful than they were in 2016?
DeSantis has been the leader of the Republican Party in Florida since 2018. Are the Democrats in Florida today more powerful or less powerful than they were in 2018?
That's the difference. One man (who is an actual conservative) fights and achieves.
The other man (an old New York liberal) just gets beat up.
‘There is no plan. There’s nothing’: Insiders tell of panic and despair in Florida Democratic Party
January 23, 2023
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/insiders-panic-despair-florida-democratic-party
I’ll answer your reasonable question two different ways. You may not like either answer, but so what.
Let’s get the trite (but IMO valid) tack out of the way first. Running Florida is junior high school ball. Running the USA is pro ball. A completely different level of opponent; a completely different level of team play. Plus RdS isn’t playing on a junior high school team “with” teammates who are out to see his legs broken on ever play like some of Trump’s supposed “teammates” were. ;-) And Disney is, frankly, a junior-high level of opponent compared to (say) North Korea. Or Iraq. Or the IPCC. Or the UN. Or NATO. Or the US CIA or DOJ or FBI.
But here’s a different question that exposes a more sophisticated analysis. Leave aside Florida for a moment, we’ll come back to it. Are the national Democrats stronger — or weaker — after four years of Donald Trump as POTUS than they would have been after four years of Hillary? Corollary: ask that same question hypothetically about any of the serious candidates that ran against Trump in the 2016 primary. Jeb vs. Hillary? Ben Carson vs. Hillary? Giuliani vs. Hillary? All of those would have crumbled — gone along to get along with the deep, deep state and its preferred global alliances.
The strength of the ‘Rat party didn’t come about between 2016 and 2020. It was built out over at least 28 years since Reagan — seven presidential terms, four ‘Rat and three RINO. During that time Clintoon and Obammy built out the Gramscian Marxist deep state, well, deeply (and the Bushes went along with it when they were POTUS). If Hillary had achieved power, our fate would have been cemented AND WE WOULD NOT EVEN KNOW WE WERE BEING BOILED. Trump didn’t destroy the Marxian deep state, but his wrecking ball DID damage it and, most importantly, EXPOSED it to the sunlight. That exposure to sunlight is KEY; the DemonRat beast WAS wounded (mortally, I believe) and continues to weaken BECAUSE Trump continues to fight the beast.
Back to Florida: a significant part of RdS’s success in even getting elected in FL is due to the support, tangible and ideological, that Donald Trump gave him. I’ll grant that RdS did a good job of solidifying the conservative in FL once he got hold of the levers of power. But without Trump it is not a vacuous argument that FL would be suffering under Governor Gillum.