ANDY KESSLER: The Voting Bloc Against Bossiness: The Dontells don’t want to be told what to think, what to say, or what to do.

Meet the Dontells, sure to be a political force in the next few elections. Their mantra is simple: Don’t tell me what to do, hence the name. Their telltale sign is an obvious case of ODD. What’s that? Oppositional defiant disorder, which, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine, is a behavior disorder, often in children who “are uncooperative, defiant, and hostile toward peers, parents, teachers, and other authority figures.” Yeah, I’ve got that.

Also add: Don’t tell me what to say, to think, to pay. Backlash was inevitable against the metastatic absurdity. Use only paper straws. Don’t tell me what to do. You can’t say “master bedroom” anymore. Oh yes I can. That 6-foot-tall dude winning all the NCAA women’s swimming meets is really a woman. I don’t think so. Every threat is existential. Maybe to you. No abortions ever. What? Your taxes pay people not to work. Make it stop!

Tea partiers and red-hatted MAGA supporters pushed back against Obama-era bossiness. They didn’t want high taxes to pay for open-border welfare, gun confiscation or being woke poked. Heck, they even supported a blundering bloviator for president. That’s how desperate their Dontell dedication was. Note, there is a fine distinction between the Doncares (I don’t care), the Leavmis (leave me alone), and the Dontells. The first two groups rarely vote. But Dontells vote in droves, on both sides of the aisle.

Amazingly, the whole Dontell thing still comes as a huge surprise to self-important city dwellers on both coasts. Yes, most big-city progressives like to be dominated and enjoy being told what to do. Walk/Don’t Walk. Mind the gap. Wait in long lines. Alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations. Calorie counts in doughnut shops. Confiscatory taxes. New York’s (unconstitutional) ban on large sodas. San Francisco’s ban on Happy Meals. The seemingly mandatory use of words such as “positionality” and “performative” in conversation.

Liberals, implied in the name, say they are for freedom, but are they? The progressive wing is full of authoritarians telling others what to do or how to think: America is a racist country. Wear a mask. Limit charter schools. Bees are fish (in California). “A drag queen for every school” (Michigan’s attorney general promises). ESG. CRT. DEI. I could go on. Meanwhile, Dontells are fed up with submission.

Elon Musk, who tweets about a “woke mind virus,” became a card-carrying Dontell in 2020 when California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lockdowns closed his Tesla factories. He eventually moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas. Last year 340,000 others left California. I would bet most are Dontells.

So far, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a Dontell hero—he checks all the boxes. He got rid of lockdowns and mask mandates. He stood up to Disney’s pushback against a law requiring classroom discussions of sex to be age-appropriate. The state still levies no income tax. His appeal, I think, is that he wants voters to make up their own minds about what to say or do.

There is going to be a fight for Dontell swing voters in 2024.

Bossiness is a natural impulse in much of the population. People will be bossy unless and until it’s personally expensive, risky, and unpleasant to do so. Then they will stop. Make it happen.