I'm not sure what you mean by your question. Are you asking if DeSantis being the candidate of the moment is something that the forum just made up, as opposed to it having some basis in the outside world? If so, then it's the latter, in the sense that, in polls in which Trump is not listed as an option, he's now in the "top tier" (which just means that he's at least double digits), whereas as recently as December he was only at 1 or 2% in every poll. See the last poll of Iowa and the last poll nationally, for example:
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=435200.0
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=433951.0
So *something* has happened to get him some national attention, because candidates who start out with poor national name recognition and stuck in the 0-2% range in polls do not normally make that kind of jump this far in advance of the actual primaries. Many candidates in the 0-2% range *never* get beyond that. I mean, Hickenlooper got like 1% in the polls, and no one knew who he was, and then once he ran and appeared in debates, people *still* didn't know who he was.
So DeSantis has at least made that first move, to getting some national attention. But whether that means he'll still be a player 3 years from now is anyone's guess.
You're much more familiar with the early primary polling than I am, so let me ask: what are DeSantis' name recognition numbers among GOP voters? I'd suspect they'd be somewhere between 20-30% so the fact that he's maybe winning
a majority of GOP voters who have heard of him in a sans Trump race seems very significant.
