Why is the DeSantis campaign website so bad?

How can the DeSantis campaign website be so bad?

Table of Contents

INTRO
WATCH THIS VIDEO
UNPACKING THE CAMPAIGN WEBSITE
COMPARING CAMPAIGN WEBSITES

INTRO

DeSantis goes to Iowa, disembarks from a preposterously sized tour bus wearing blue jeans in a condition not new and not old, boots that have never stepped in shit, a shirt offensively bland and a vest with his name on it so that the small town folk can tell it’s him and not the reclusive Mr. Shrewlittle from down the road.

Possessed of de minimis joy and lacking folksy inquisitiveness, he’ll go from shindig to town hall to watering holes, pizzerias.

Observing campaign ritual, DeSantis will jibber jabber about an “evangelical vote” “our values” “my morals” and so on and so on.

It is important that in the resulting soundbites and clips we see people in uncomfortable ‘small town humble’ metal folding chairs, nodding their heads in approval when they are approving, and nodding ‘no’ when they are not approving.

Another tradition is the intimate table talk type of interview. CNN and Fox and really all of the news blob, will ask DeSantis a question about immigration or China or whatever and he’ll recite that same weighty tangle of words that he said ad nauseam in all those small blurry towns in Iowa.

After about 2-3 minutes of this linguistic motion that yields no progress, the interviewer will say “okay, let’s get out of the weeds and talk about…” and a new subject is introduced. This is ironic because DeSantis has said nothing “in the weeds”, nothing original or exact, nothing actionable.

Candidates in Name Only are interviewed by Journalists in Name Only.

“We have to make more products in America” is not “in the weeds of policy”(note: look serious, add a few specialist sounding words that coyly suggest an intimate understanding of this complex topic. Hammer your primary opponent Vivek)

Just because the interviewer says “that’s enough talk about policy, let’s move on” doesn’t mean there has been any talk about policy to move on from.

Policies have intricate, dynamic, relationships with other policies. Policies are funded and staffed, there is compliance and enforcement and there are hard costs to its operations from the government side, and to its constituents. Policies have consequences, they also have amendments that can alter their course substantially. Policies have lobbyists and special interests and privileges that will influence an outcome desirable to someone, and undesirable to someone else.

What DeSantis is doing is not an ability to get policy wonkish, or “in the weeds”, but rather to blur the distinction between policy and blurbs.

A blurb is not a policy just as the microwave instructions on a frozen dinner does not describe how the food was made, only how it is prepared.

Here is a simple question for Ron DeSantis and I would like to ask follow ups.

“Why is your campaign website in 2023 worse than the BushCheney campaign website in 2004.

WATCH THIS VIDEO

This video is amazing, I did it to keep me sane “how can it be this bad” and maybe it’ll be therapeutic for you too. In the video I also cover the DeSantis ads vs Democrat ads and so on and so on.

You should watch it.

UNPACKING THE CAMPAIGN WEBSITE

Any button you click such as events, volunteer, shop, donate, etc., opens up in a new window.

You leave the homepage environment and now you’ve got junky tabs opened up. If you want to go back to the home page you have to find the tab from the ones you’ve opened up.

To make it even crazier, the tabs that are opened direct you to a WinRed page, which has a different avatar, so you wind up with the Ron DeSantis home page and a bunch of WinRed tabs and the pages have no navigation to go back to any other part of the page. You can’t go from ‘donate’ to ‘volunteer’, etc. Each page is totally isolated from the others. It’s F’ing bananas.

LANDING PAGE

desantis new landing page adam townsend

JOIN PAGE

The entire site is unresponsive, it doesn’t resize depending on the viewers device or viewing portal.

In case your eyes can’t tolerate the big bold red font, the text says “Sign up to receive important news alerts via SMS & email below so that you can join Team DeSantis in the fight for freedom.“

EVENTS PAGE

The events page has only one event listed for in the ‘show All‘ tab, lol

desantis events tab adam townsend

MEDIA PAGE

This is the media tab, request for interviews and media inquiries are on this 1990’s era web form. The “Media kit” is boring so if you want to see it, knock yourself out.

MEET RON DESANTIS PAGE

If you haven’t given up yet and yer feeling lucky, this is what you get when you click on the Meet Ron DeSantis tab.

I shit you not, I had to take two pics to get most of it in

VOLUNTEER PAGE

DONATE: CONTRIBUTOR SCROLL ON FRONT PAGE

Desantis adam townsend scroll page 1

In case you missed it, on the landing page there is a scroll of contributors, for example: ‘$20.50 from Mary L, Chicago‘.

This serves as a scarecrow, it creates friction and apprehension.

When you land on the page the emotional reaction is “Holy shit, are they gonna doxx me?” It’s likely that the scroll is:

a demo loop for an effect
the site is scraping data from its merchant processor WinRed

Scarecrows frighten away the birds.

DONATE PAGE

More scarecrow to scare away more birds.

Desantis adam townsend scroll page 2

SHOP PAGE

There’s lot of the usual merch, mugs, and so on.

MAMAS FOR DESANTIS PAGE

Hard to explain how bad this macabre, Vincent Price’ish ad is. If you’re curious here ya go “MAMAS FOR DESANTIS” POST-MORTEM

COMPARING CAMPAIGN WEBSITES

RON DESANTIS FOR GOVERNOR

How is it possible that the campaign website when DeSantis was running for governor is clearly better than it is now? Somebody came in and said to make it worse, no?