Beto O’Rourke, who obviously needs to take straight-shooter lessons from Pete Buttigieg, has clearly calculated that “America does not want another player in the outrage industrial complex. And he knows that for a Democrat to beat Donald Trump, he/she has to basically be nice, normal and not weird. And that’s what he’s trying to do.

“The problem is that he has to backpedal all the time…he’s had to apologize. He says ‘yeah, I’m out of town a lot and my wife has to take care of the kids when I’m gone’ — a pretty normal joke. But then he has to apologize, which I think is a mistake. I actually believe that the brand of being normal and nice…to not fire people up so they hate others and treat them with contempt..can really work. Now, [obviously] he’s got to have some more substance going forward, and we’ll see.” — Arthur Brooks, columnist, The Washington Post.