A Flat Start for DeSantis, and it Isn't All Twitter's Fault

By now you’re all probably aware that Ron DeSantis’s campaign launch was undermined by a massive failure to perform by Elon Musk and Twitter. So many Twitter users tried to flood into the Twitter Spaces site at 6:00 p.m. ET yesterday that the Twitter servers crashed multiple times.

The halting start lasted 20 minutes before the event really got underway, giving the opposition media that is now so oddly aligned with the Trump campaign a chance to gloat a bit.

It seems more than a little odd that Musk didn’t force Twitter’s staff to conduct real stress tests on the Twitter Spaces system. I mean, the damn thing crashed when the audience had exceeded 700,000 users, a small fraction of Musk’s 141 million followers. What, they didn’t expect that many to tune in? Hard to believe.

Once the event finally did get underway, the candidate was able to recover somewhat, although it quickly became obvious he, Musk and the other Twitter exec moderating the show were all speaking from prepared scripts. Not ideal.

I’m becoming increasingly concerned that DeSantis may not be up to competing at this level, mainly because he and his staff don’t seem to understand his own personal appeal to voters.

DeSantis has established one of the most impressive records of positive, conservative accomplishment of any governor in modern times, and that’s all great as a foundation on which to base a campaign. His strategy to present himself as a promoter of Trump-type policies without all the associated crazy and unforced errors that come with it is also excellent, and spot on for an electorate that is craving someone who can restore some semblance of normalcy to U.S. society.

But he and his staff don’t really seem to understand why Trump was elected to begin with. Simply put: Trump was elected mainly because he was the only guy on stage who wasn’t reciting talking points. He was elected mainly because he was the one guy who was saying what was really on his mind, not on the minds of a bunch of talking points script writers.

Don’t get me wrong: The very worst thing DeSantis could do would be to suddenly go all Trump crazy. Only Trump can do that and get away with it.

But what he can do is put down the talking points, stop reciting them, and start talking to Americans in his own voice, using his own language. This was Trump’s magic touch, and also Ronald Reagan’s most valuable personal talent.

I’ve written often here that I see so much of Reagan in DeSantis when he is talking extemporaneously at an event. Once he gets done with the script and starts fielding questions from the hostile press, that’s when the magic begins. That’s when he says things that make you want to stand up and shout “damn right!” at the television.

He and his staff do not appear to have figured this out, and it’s a big reason why his launch fell so flat once Twitter resolved all the technical glitches last night.

They had better figure it out fast or this race will be over before it really even begins.

That is all.