Well, I didn’t think that launching the campaign on Twitter Spaces with David Sacks and Elon Musk would matter much, and in the long run I still don’t. But, with the technical difficulties factored in — it was a missed opportunity. He should have just been in a packed college football stadium with his photogenic family, and a particularly high-energy speech. As it was, the announcement overwhelmed Twitter’s servers, and half a million people listened in on silence, while their Twitter app kicked them off. In the moment, DeSantis fans wanted to cry that it was a world-historical disaster. It wasn’t — just a missed opportunity.
My cards have been on the table for a while now. I think DeSantis has the best chance of any Republican of uniting the party and building a winning coalition for 2024. I’m not worried about the eight minutes of silence in his Twitter launch. I’m worried that his campaign against “the woke mind virus” takes up 20 percent too much of his precious time, and that his campaign is basically silent on an economic model or agenda for Americans.
Successful candidates for president talk about the economy, and jobs that support families, and restoring upward mobility. He needs to talk about getting the younger generations into homes of their own, where they can raise the next generation of Americans and pass down our traditions and way of life. DeSantis has an easier path than any Republican in the last 30 years to finesse the divides between free-traders and protectionists in his party by framing these issues in terms of global competition or competition with China specifically.