In today’s Wall Street Journal I examine the somewhat mysterious appeal of Beto O’Rourke.
“Mr. O’Rourke probably won’t be the nominee. There’s lots of competition to be the Democratic “fresh face,” including candidates such as Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, who can credibly claim to have accomplished something. But Betomania is real and weird. Cory Booker didn’t get this much media love when he rescued a neighbor in Newark, N.J., from a burning building.“
Read more here.
9 Comments.
Too bad it’s behind a paywall. Yeah, it’s an interesting phenomenon. Maybe it’s the cool name plus the boyish good looks? Maybe people associate him with almost whupping Cruz’s ass? Maybe it’s just refreshing to have a candidate who doesn’t have a lot of baggage?
His policies sound sound – “expanding access to Medicare, requiring universal background checks for gun buyers, instating universal pre-kindergarten and a fifteen-dollar minimum wage, recruiting more teachers of color, addressing the rise in maternal mortality rates, ending the prohibition on marijuana and the war on drugs, and signing a new voting-rights act into law.”
On the Democratic continuum, he’s fairly far left – I’d prefer someone even further but I realize that my views aren’t exactly mainstream. Dunno, what he’d actually do in office. It’s gonna be an interesting race, though.
I am suspect of Beto for the same reason I am suspect of most politicians. Aside from all the oil money he’s taken, and putting aside the dirty trick of handing $4.5 million to the Texas Dems a few weeks earlier so that they could transfer the money right back to him on his first day of fundraising so that he could “outraise” Bernie Sanders shows that, like Hillary, it’s about the candidate’s needs, not the electorate’s.
As for “expanding access to Medicare, requiring universal background checks for gun buyers, instating universal pre-kindergarten and a fifteen-dollar minimum wage, recruiting more teachers of color, addressing the rise in maternal mortality rates, ending the prohibition on marijuana and the war on drugs, and signing a new voting-rights act into law” all of those are things that Bernie Sanders supports (without fundraising trickery or oil money). Furthermore, “expanding” Medicare isn’t the same as making it universal. And speaking of universal, a whole lot of the gun holders who shoot up schools, churches, etc., get the guns through the legal methods. Or they simply steal them from those who did get them legally.
Beto couldn’t beat Ted Cruz. Now he’s one of the anointed (Kamala Harris and Joe Biden aren’t aging well) that the Dem leadership is advancing, regardless of the fact that he won’t be able to win against Trump. I don’t know who Sanders is going to pick as veep–I’m hoping for Nina Turner–but I also hope he makes some obvious hints about cabinet-level positions to gather up some additional voters. Yang has good ideas about Universal Basic Income (an idea that goes back at least as far as Nixon, so it isn’t hippie-dippie bullshit). Buttigieg could be useful too. But Trump’s coming apart at the seams. Running a centrist or a “who dat” candidate is the only way he’ll be able to win.
oh, heck yeah I’d take Bernie first.
Jay Inslee is running on a Global Warming platform, love to see him get it for that alone – but the name recognition just ain’t there. I expect him to be an early casualty.
Beto? From what I know right now today, I’d vote for him if he got the nod, but then in that case I’d do my homework before casting my ballot.
Too bad it’s behind a paywall
The financial press is too insightful not to read, but obviously too tainted to support with money.
Luckily certain buccaneers who congregate at a certain lagoon (ahem) regularly flood print editions of certain magazines. Not that I would abet the electronic equivalent of shop-lifting – speaking of shop-lifting, to quote my favorite radio show host (Chuck from thisishell): “Remember: when shop-lifting, shop-lift at Walmart!”
Ted’s short piece can be found in the April 2nd print edition of the WSJ.
You can access the full text of WSJ pieces by clicking through directly from Twitter.
There’s another way in, something to the effect of asking Google to translate and then asking to go back to the original text?
https://fossbytes.com/how-to-use-google-services-as-a-proxy-server-to-bypass-paywalls-download-files/
Sometimes you can simply copy the text out from underneath the dialog as well. Not that I’m against paying for my journalism – but I am against paying the WSJ…
Funny thing, though. When you look at Beto closely, his “boyish” good looks don’t really hold up. His teeth look funny. His nose is crooked. Bobby Kennedy had the same sort of thing going on, but Bobby Kennedy was considerably more genuine (or at least more genuine seeming).
Maybe after a couple of drinks, Beto will look better to me, but for now, his looks don’t go far enough and his politics absolutely don’t cover up the gap.
Perhaps Mr O’Rourke could chose Rafael Edward as his vice presidential candidate ? Now that would be a ticket to appeal to the country !… 😉
Henri
For a piece written by Ted for the WSJ and published (online) on April Fool’s Day, I was hoping that for a socialist case for Beto O’Rourke, that love-child of Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci, cell-mate of Eugene Debs, and comrade in arms of Leon Trotsky.
To be fair, this would have been very difficult to write. Compared to Obama who skillfully became a mirror reflecting back to everyone whatever vision they wanted to see, Beto O’Rourke is just a blank. As Ted concludes: It makes you long for the specificity of “hope and change.”. 😉