At any rate, Politico’s shovels were out again — still — Thursday to describe Ron DeSantis’ campaign rally in Tampa, where he was surrounded by scores of Sunshine State sheriffs and police, as well as Ashley Moody, the popular attorney general, all of whom are endorsing the governor’s GOP presidential aspirations.

Politico took the opportunity to describe the RDS campaign as “weakened,” listing its assorted difficulties: financial nuances, staff restructuring, stubborn polls favoring the serially indicted 45th president.

The Florida governor has for months tried to meet the lofty expectations set when he jumped into the presidential race in May. Since then, he’s reorganized his campaign several times, laid off staff and faced endless attacks by [Donald] Trump, who continues to lead by double-digits in polls.

Stipulated: All of that is accurate and fair game. It’s the cut-and-paste repetitiveness, accompanied by unvarnished glee, that rankles. We’d caution our colleagues against outracing their headlights, but they just seem to be having so much fun.

The old sportswriter in me is reminded of the early April morning in 1986 when then Miss Barbara, wife of 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus, taped to the kitchen refrigerator of the Augusta house they’d leased for the week the Atlanta Constitution-Journal golf writer’s assessment of the Golden Bear’s chances to add a sixth Masters green jacket. No hope, the writer said. Nicklaus was “gone, done. He just doesn’t have the game anymore. It’s rusted from lack of use. He’s 46, and nobody that old wins the Masters.”

You don’t have to be a golf historian to the rest. Sunday night, in the adoring glow of an east Georgia twilight, having stormed seemingly from nowhere, the Golden Bear slipped into Green Jacket No. 6. In his post-championship remarks, golf’s GOAT cited the note taped to the fridge as a key inspiration.

Perhaps sensing this was a one-off, however, punditry learned nothing; premature scalp-seeking persists. Recent example: Torn Achilles at 39? Aaron Rodgers is over. Rodgers has other ideas.

Overzealous write-offs befell, too, Iowa-caucus losers Ronald Reagan (1980) and Bill Clinton (1992). This time in their respective presidential races, Barack Obama and Donald Trump also were readily dismissed. It turns out early days are exactly that.

As ESPN’s sage Lee Corso advises, “Not so fast, my friend.” 

Like Nicklaus, DeSantis appears not to be conceding anything, even though, by now, he could have wallpapered the governor’s mansion with his political obituaries.

That willingness to dig in and refortify is heartening for DeSantis’ supporters, who are nothing if not enthusiastic. Reassuringly, the governor’s campaign reported a $15 million haul in the latest reporting quarter. No strangers to hyperbole themselves, campaign messengers described it as the “DeSantis Comeback.” Temperance, y’all.

Why the enthusiasm for painting DeSantis’ prospects as glum or worse? Perhaps because he keeps expressing inconvenient (you know, center-right) points of view.

Florida Politics’ A.G. Gancarski made a bit of hay over DeSantis’ tough-on-crime remarks, particular his “dispelling” of “phony controversies” and “panics” fueled by media reports of police brutality linked to the 2014 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

DeSantis noted the falsified plot line that preceded riots and looting, noted the findings of Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice (“hands up, don’t shoot” didn’t happen), and concluded he doesn’t “get caught up in these phony narratives,” but, instead, will “call them out on the B.S.”

Cue Coach Corso.

While Holder didn’t find cause to support criminal charges, Gancarski noted, Ferguson was primed for explosiveness by “deep distrust and hostility [that] often characterized interactions between police and area residents.”

However, the fundamental facts of the matter, noted by DeSantis, remain intact. The media narrative, recklessly striking sparks in an ammunition depot, was utterly bogus. You simply can’t write off a candidate to speaks plainly on prickly topics — not one with an administrative record to back up bold statements.

Wait. There’s more.

Visiting CNBC’s Squawk Box Friday morning, DeSantis obliterated the conventional wisdom regarding his and the Florida’s Legislature’s muscular response to the Walt Disney Co. meddling in state policymaking.

twitter.com/CNBC/status/1710296458409201745?s=20

So, here is the deal. Yes, they opposed the bill. That’s fine. I honestly I don’t think that that’s consistent with their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders. I think they’ve really hurt their company by pursuing a political agenda and a whole host of reasons. But they also after that said that they were going to try to get the bill repealed, and get it struck down in the courts. Now, do they have a right to do that? Of course. But we are not obligated to subsidize their attacks against state policy, and they were getting massive subsidies, which were not justified in and of themselves.

“But it’s doubly problematic when they then weaponized those subsidies against the state of Florida and against our parents and against our kids. And I think it was an issue where this had long been something that was not publicly justifiable, but they had a lot of power with the Florida legislature over the years. They really called the shots. And then, what happened was, when they got into this, and then they said they were going to try to get the bill repealed, that really caused their support in the legislature to evaporate. …

 “The larger issue, I think is, how much is Corporate America going to be trying to exercise quasi-public power? And we see that through things like ESG, with some of the big asset managers, also some of the major corporations. My view is that policy should be set by people that we elect. And to have a bunch of Wall Street banks get together and say they’re not going to finance somebody who is running a gun store or things like that, well, that’s changing policy in ways that are not accountable to the electorate.”

Does this sound like a guy who’s on his last legs, who’s worn out, beaten down, threadbare, and ready to let the shovels do their work? Or does it sound like someone who knows what’s what, knows how to explain his positions, argues persuasively, and — like Nicklaus, hopelessly behind yet eyeing opportunity on the back nine at Augusta National on that long-ago Masters Sunday — is just getting warmed up?

Did we mention that Jack was 46 at the time? About that. DeSantis, that spring chicken, is a mere 45.