If Beto O’Rourke were black, we could blame opposition to his popularity on racism. If he were female, we could blame it on misogyny. As it is, the mainstream Democrats who loved Hillary are going to have to face the fact that the Berniecrats have no such reasons to oppose Beto O’Rourke, yet they’re against him anyway. They just really, truly don’t think he’s progressive enough, which is exactly the reason they gave for rejecting Hillary before Hillary’s folks womansplained that no, it was misogyny.
The media, perhaps because it reinforces their standard narrative “Democrats In Disarray,” is jumping all over this. NBC has identified this Berniecrat move to label and contain Beto’s popularity as the “first flashpoint in what promises to be a politically bloody primary.”
The main line of attack against O’Rourke is that he isn’t progressive enough — that he’s been too close to Republicans in Congress, too close to corporate donors and not willing enough to use his star power to help fellow Democrats — and it is being pushed almost exclusively by Sanders supporters online and in print.
Do Berniecrats realize their guy simply isn’t as popular as they think he is? Again, from NBC:
A Quinnipiac University poll released Dec. 19 showed that 57 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 34 have a favorable view of Sanders, while his unfavorable ratings are higher than his favorables with voters 35 and older.
All the kicking and screaming about O’Rourke’s record won’t fix that. Beto isn’t Hillary, with a long public record of corporatism behind him. It’s quite possible that his positions as a presidential candidate will be well to the left of his positions as a red-state congressman. Voters don’t vote for positions, they vote for people. The issue here isn’t whether people would vote for O’Rourke; we know they would. It’s whether he’ll take positions that benefit people over party. IMHO, trying to influence his positions will be more effective than opposing him personally.
Robert Reich regularly runs columns recounting his discussions with his friend, a Republican former member of Congress, on the state of the Trump presidency. This installment finds his GOP friend declaring Trump’s end draws nigh. Key sentence: “The base doesn’t pay the bills.” That’s what the Delaware GOP learned when Christine O’Donnell defeated Mike Castle, and it’s why Democrats here get a free pass. A powerless opposition party leads to a feckless majority party.
Interesting take on Trump from someone writing a book about how he ran riot in Palm Beach when he first bought Mar-a-Lago. As the author notes, he gained a lot of his me-against-the-establishment experience in his fight with the politicians who represented the Florida town’s notoriously snobby and insulated smart set.
You could set up a college fund if you had a dollar for every pundit who has stopped to piss on Paul Ryan’s political grave. Here’s Digby’s take on the Boy Wonder’s farewell tour.