Poll after poll of registered Democrats suggests the rank and file just want somebody who can defeat Donald Trump. Lindsey Graham claims Dems just want power, which makes the personalities and policies of the current field mighty curious. Securing the 2020 nomination will be a delicate dance, but the current field has yet to master it. Kamala Harris is attractive but undisciplined, unwisely tweeting charges of KKK activity after the Jussie Smollett hoax. Bernie Sanders looks like Grandpa Wheezer but, at least, stays on his populist message.
Because of the growing and confusing field of candidates, The Conservative Guardian will publish a multi-part series of critical examinations, which shed light on the wackiest field of mad-liberal presidential hopefuls in my lifetime, beginning with Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke. As you will read, he’s even weirder than President Trump; so, don’t be surprised if he does not even make it past Labor Day.
Let’s begin with the fact O’Rourke graduated from Woodberry Forest School, an all-male bastion of southern (confederate-flag belts) male privilege and hardly a birthplace of progressive thought. His six years in the US House of Representatives was underwhelming: passing only three bills into law: (1) naming a federal building in El Paso after Democrat R. E. Thomason, (2) creating an “alternative “ way for veterans to appeal their crappy treatment, and (3) securing nine extra months of tuition assistance for members of the Armed Forces. Big whoop!
Beto could not even win statewide office in Texas against Republican Senator Ted Cruz in the wave election of 2018. He is not the “next Bobby Kennedy” after losing by 3 percentage points to a Republican who was called a “jackass” by former House Speaker John Boehner. Beto claimed the close loss made him hopeful, choosing to ignore the Republican governor’s 13-point margin of victory. If Beto is incapable of turning the Lone Star State blue in 2018, he has no shot of defeating the red-state firewall.
How O’Rourke chose to support the Green New Deal was embarrassing: “This country was willing to sacrifice men and women, all over the United States, to make sure we defeated Germany. The Green New Deal calls [for] that sacrifice and service and scale of commitment.” Such hyperbole is bad national politics. Germany was a clear-and-present existential threat, and I doubt independent voters will equate 400,000 American deaths and the Holocaust to the inexact science of climate.
Beto’s greatest weakness is that the more he speaks the less thoughtful he appears. Against Ted Cruz, he defended NFL players who kneeled during the National Anthem: “I can think of nothing more American.” Mind you, he said this to Texas voters, who absolutely oppose kneeling in protest (source: Quinnipiac poll). His opposition to Trump’s wall was utter nonsense: “We’re not safe because of walls but in spite of walls.”
Poor Beto really screwed up when he wondered to the Washington Post whether “an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries…can [still] be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago.” And just like that, he belittled the Declaration of Independence and its four principles (the rights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the government’s responsibility to protect those rights) and the seven principles in the US Constitution (popular sovereignty, limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, judicial review, federalism, and republicanism). This begs the question: how can O’Rourke preside over a nation that he does not even know or appreciate?
I suspect serious Democrats, such as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders, will carve up Mr. O’Rourke. The media has already jumped off his Good Ship Lollipop onto Pete Buttigieg’s campaign bandwagon. His chances of securing the DNC nomination are less likely now than that oddball Willam Weld’s chances of securing the RNC nomination. This might appear mean, but both men represent the circus sideshows that bore thoughtful Democrats and Republicans to tears. Beto, we hardly knew you. Thank God for that!