Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The new (social media) lay of the land

Michael A. Cohen/”Truth and Consequences” on Substack:

The Perils Of Online-ness

Outrage might work on Twitter but it's a loser in politics.

Late Friday afternoon, Ron DeSantis’s Twitter feed pushed out a video so full of harsh and ostentatiously hate-filled anti-LGBT tropes even some Republicans were appalled by it.

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Much has already been written about this episode of presidential campaign Hari-kari, but two crucial points are not getting enough attention.

First, this is yet another example of the bewildering incompetence of the DeSantis campaign. A pro-DeSantis Twitter feed produced this bizarre video, and the campaign’s Twitter War Room account pushed it out, apparently oblivious to the political damage that it could do. A smart presidential campaign would not have touched this video — which, as noted above, twice compares DeSantis to a serial killer and positively notes that legislation passed in Florida puts the lives of trans kids in danger — with a ten-foot pole.

The problem, however, is more than just lousy staff. This episode is emblematic of a candidate and campaign that is terminally online and obsessively focused on the various right-wing outrages that drive social media. This gets to something that the Bulwark’s Tim Miller wrote a few months ago in comparing the faltering DeSantis campaign to that of 2020 Democratic contender Elizabeth Warren.