Despite the Houston Chronicle endorsement, Beto O’Rourke is currently too far behind Ted Cruz to be elected on 11.6. But at least he’ll be free to launch a 2020 Presidential campaign. For those who haven’t signed up for HE:plus (thanks!), here’s the entire Beto O’Rourke riff that I posted on 10.18:
The hour is getting late and the Democrats need somebody strong and flinty to run against President Trump, and the more I kick it around the more I realize it has to be Beto. The Texas Senate race has nationalized him in a positive light. He’s been a U.S. Congressman for five years. He has the moxie and the aura, and there’s no time like right now.
Nobody else in the Democratic field has that stand-up, here-I-am, take-it-or-leave-it quality…that lean and burnished tonality…that alpha mojo charisma that Beto has. He’s 46 now, 47 and 48 in 2020. Why the hell not?
A choice between a 21st Century Kennedy-like figure, a tough fourth-generation Irishman…an unapologetically liberal, principled, tenacious and patriotic Texan who knows how to skateboard and used to be in a band vs. a lying, bloated, dessicated, hopelessly corrupt, egotistical sociopath and dictator-coddling traitor who will be 74 in June 2020…are you kidding me?
Who else can it be? A voice is telling me that Elizabeth Warren, storied and committed and admirable as she is, might not win against Bluster Cheeto (impassioned granny schoolmarm vs. bellowing alpha bull in a china shop). Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are too old. Sen. Kamala Harris isn’t that well known, and there’s something about her that’s a little too admonishing and prosecutorial (i.e., threatening to hinterland male bumblefucks). And there’s something about Sen. Corey Booker that feels more like vice-presidential than presidential timber.
The under-30 non-voters would step to the plate for Beto along with the rest of the liberal-progressives plus women, Latinos, African Americans. Beto has that X-factor, forward-facing, we-can-do-this quality. Obama was 47 when he was elected in 2008; JFK was 43 in 1960.
The earth is choking and drowning to death right now and Trump couldn’t care less, not to mention all his other sociopathic shortcomings. A fuck-all, lying, fossil fuel-embracing, Saudi-murder-winking authoritarian criminal. How grotesque can a U.S. President be without the nation collectively throwing up on the floor? What are we supposed to do? Wait seven years before starting to protect the earth for our great-grandchildren and their descendants?
