The DeSantis Campaign Was Too Online

Trump was probably unbeatable. The campaign was too chaotic. Voters no longer care about Covid. These are just some of the reasons offered, including at National Review, for the failure of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential run.

But one defect of DeSantis’s campaign may not get enough attention: its catering to the right-wing Twittersphere. Before the campaign even began, DeSantis was making personnel moves that made sense only if one believed that the highly niche and weird right-wing ecosystem that had developed online was not just important, but perhaps paramount. As early as 2022, DeSantis was cultivating relations with some of that world’s most prominent figures. As he geared up for the campaign itself last year, he hired some of them; many of his initial efforts took on a decidedly online flavor.

What did that look like? It started off with a ridiculously mealy-mouthed answer given to a former Fox News host about Ukraine. Reasonable disagreements about U.S. involvement in the conflict are possible, but the DeSantis answer was equivocating, ponderous, and set afire a field of straw men. It was most notable for its contrived sophistication papering over a patent superficiality, as in its description of Russia’s war on Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” and its wanton invocation of our Constitution’s main drafter to argue that Vladimir Putin’s removal would be unlikely to “produce a pro-American, Madisonian constitutionalist in the Kremlin.”

The analysis it contained did DeSantis no favors with the Right’s hawks, and did not seem to impress doves, either. It was a futile attempt to find some kind of middle ground, on the apparent assumption that such balance-striking was necessary because of how dominant outright antipathy (versus a more historically recognizable apathy) toward the Ukrainian cause appears online. Though DeSantis walked the statement back, it presaged his incoherent approach to the issue during the primary, arguably more consequential for the manner of its incoherence than for its substance.

That happened before DeSantis’s campaign even started. The formal beginning was itself a fiasco. Viewing its too-online character not as a bug but as a feature, the campaign launched on X (Twitter), using the Spaces conference-call feature. I thought this was a bad idea at the time. Aside from my concerns about its technical risks (which were vindicated), I wondered what the decision to launch in this way suggested about the campaign itself:

An essential element of its emerging strategy appears to be rooted in the belief that Twitter is not merely a means to disseminate information and messaging produced elsewhere, but an essential political battleground in itself – a digital Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina. DeSantis appears to be actively seeking out the kind of Terminally Online aura that gave us such electoral juggernauts as Blake Masters in 2022 — or, on the other side of the aisle, Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. These campaigns went from believing in Twitter’s power to letting it define their reality, and it doomed them.

There was already some evidence this would be the case. The launch, which dwelt on arcane political intricacies once the technical issues were resolved, provided more. And the following summer supplied more still. Consider two videos produced by the campaign, then distributed through affiliated Twitter accounts. The first attacked Trump for being insufficiently socially conservative, presented DeSantis as a stalwart by contrast . . . and sprinkled in images of shirtless and muscular men to drive the point home. An interesting approach. The second, similarly designed to make DeSantis look like an “alpha,” culminated in the governor at the center of a sonnenrad, an ancient symbol adopted and popularized by fascists. That will show Trump! The video engendered much criticism and led to the firing of the DeSantis staffer who spearheaded its creation.

One could point to other evidence of this insular internet mindset, such as the campaign’s preference to give scoops or exclusives to little-read outlets. But did it matter? Some would emphasize other campaign mistakes, such as an uncertain division of labor, and exogenous factors beyond DeSantis’s control, such as the indictments. Undoubtedly, these played a role.

But being lured into Twitter rabbit holes provided poor direction. It sucked up unnecessary resources. It drew undesired controversy. And it discolored even the non-online parts of the campaign, inclining DeSantis to take for granted the “normies” ultimately captured by Nikki Haley (whose rise at DeSantis’s apparent expense goes some way to disproving the notion that it was impossible to conduct a successful campaign in the same field as Trump). This is how something that does not matter as much as it might seem ended up having deleterious consequences for the DeSantis campaign in the real world.

It also betrayed a fundamental misconception: Not only was the subculture that right-wing Twitter represented real, but it also could exist independently of Trump. The Right remains in a period of internecine conflict, as part of which a faction that variously goes by “populism,” “national conservatism,” or other names has tried to advance a coherent worldview that could explain Trump’s political appeal but also transcend him. DeSantis believed it was possible, and so did the influencers he cultivated and hired. Their hopes have been dashed.

For now, any efforts to move conservatism in their preferred direction will have to do so through the person of Donald Trump. For all his . . . idiosyncrasies, Trump represents something real that manifests online but was not born there. And he remains a bigger and more persuasive force than any of his would-be ideologists or successors. That DeSantis, as well as some of the influencers who once rallied around him, have since announced their support for Trump proves this. What they do next is up to them. But they would do well to wonder what it means that their preferred version of political reality seems so much more potent in the bespoke and ephemeral environs of digital life. The rest of us would do well to wonder whether their influence is as great as those environs make it seem. And we would all do well to contemplate these things offline.