Quite why Fried, the state’s agriculture commissioner, wishes to be in politics remains as unclear now as it was in 2018. She has no policy expertise, she has an unfortunate predilection for conspiracy theorists, and, beyond her vague insistence that she would be better at the job than DeSantis, she is able to point to no personal achievements or qualities that might recommend her to the post. In this great big world of ours, the only civic issue that truly seems to rile Fried up is the one that she worked on before she was elected to public office: the legalization and dissemination of marijuana. Beyond that, it’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

As Fried’s fundraising fortunes have declined, that fury has increased. To the presumable astonishment of the many exiles and refugees in Miami and beyond, Fried has begun bastardizing Solzhenitsyn in her criticisms of Governor DeSantis. In May, Fried likened DeSantis to “the leader of a communist country,” and contended that “Florida isn’t a free state.” In January, she submitted that “DeSantis is doing everything he can to become a dictator,” before quipping that “he’s already half of that word there” and publishing a photo of the governor in front of a sack of potatoes. Last week, in a fit of pique, she went all the way. “I’m a student of history, too. I saw the rise of Hitler,” she said on the Florida Roundup podcast. “Are you comparing DeSantis to Hitler?” her interlocutor asked. “In a lot of ways, yes,” she replied.