!
Well played, sir!
Thanks. Seriously, the chance that I will vote for Beto in the primary is very low, but this isolated incident that happened when he was 26 won’t lower that chance one iota.
Huh, my friend (who is a college professor and pays closer attention to political minutae than anyone I know) said there were two.
I went back to the email from my friend and I now realize I misinterpreted a sentence:
“By privilege I mean twice he ran from police and didn’t face consequences.”
I hadn’t known about the fence-jumping thing (which I don’t see as serious). Now that I do, I can see that’s what he was referring to as the other case.
Googling it, I see he’s been arrested twice, for the DUI in 1998 and for burglary in 1995. His explanation of the burglary charge, which was dropped, was that he was trespassing on the UTEP campus, and it was charged as burglary because he hopped a fence in order to do so. The few official records that have been located don’t contradict his account. I’m not seeing that anyone is claiming he fled from police on that occasion, though.
Though the burglary charge is all but inconsequential, the opposition would be keen to soundbite it into “BURGLARY!!!1!1!! which is a problem for him. They have a habit of pounding on non-issues in a way that sometimes makes them resonate.
It might be noted that he was never actually convicted of anything, and put some effort into making good, but in the big theater, the noise often drowns out the signal.
Well, obviously his opponents have brought it up in every race he’s ever run, and he’s done OK so far. And he was not only not convicted of anything, he was never even tried.
My friend characterizes that last point as a knock on him: basically that he benefited from privilege.
Arguably a fair point. We would need data on whether blacks in similar situations at that time and place were more likely than whites to be tried, but I would be very surprised if it turned out they weren’t.
Still, I think that’s a dangerous argument. It’s one thing to say that privilege is bad, it’s another entirely to say that people who have been born into privileged groups are bad. What would your friend have had him do, call the DA and demand to be tried and convicted?
Mea Culpa. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again!
Yes, out goes Beto.
One of my friends is Beto-mad and has been ranting about how the media were so unfair to O’Rourke and how he was the most electable Democrat and how the Republicans are now rejoicing at his withdrawal from the race. The rest of us have been trying to talk him off the rhetorical ledge, in part by pointing out that someone consistently polling at 4% was never going to be “the most electable Democrat”, even if one acknowledged his positive contribution to the wider policy discussions.
Perhaps O’Rourke should have listened to Joy Behar: “They should not tell everything they’re going to do. If you’re going to take people’s guns away, wait until you get elected – then take the guns away. Don’t tell them ahead of time.”
Are you suggesting that the gun lovin’ democrats never got behind Beto because he was going to take their guns? You really think THAT is why he never polled well?
Heh, I’ve been translating the thread title to And… out goes Beto! whenever I see it now.
I do hope he stays involved. He could energize… well, anyone.
What we have seen happen to him is a classic “build 'em up to knock 'em down”.
Beto was the media darling this time last year because of his inspiring and enthusiastic campaign but also — he was one vs one against Ted Cruz. In hindsight, to lose a senate race and then immediately say “well lets go for a bigger job” is arrogant. But he was urged by the media. And it was a line of thinking that rankled some as Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum also ran in red states for Governor and nearly won. Yet they weren’t urged to jump into the presidential race as Beto was.
He did not change his campaign style from 2018 to 2019. He was still frequenting as many local communities as possible. Hectic schedules, big town halls. Keeping it local so no big national media fluff sessions. The difference was now the optics was dissected. The standing on tables, the arms waving everywhere, the speaking at 100MPH. He was not a polished politician. He was not scripted. He was not a good debater. And he struggled to carve out a niche — neither opting a very progressive policy platform nor offering a clear moderate alternative to Biden. He was stuck in between somewhere and only when his home town was subject to gun violence did he find his voice.
Now I say that with a hint of irony because on Climate Change policy and Immigration he was among the first to put out a detailed plan and it was very progressive. So much so other campaigns co-opted some of it. But it didn’t get the publicity. He also did offer a Public Option plan on par with Biden. That should have been his selling point months ago but instead he didn’t cut out a strategy and kept swinging from the hips and a new shiny toy took that mantle - Pete Buttigieg.
Buttigieg has stolen his thunder and become the new “new Obama” if you hear some of the punditry lately. For his age he is very polished. A very good speaker and debater. And he’s managed to get away with being a Medicare For All advocate as recent as February 2019. Perhaps it’s good politics to have shifted to a more incremental/phasing in a public option that builds on Obamacare and reaches Medicare For All as the end destination but it is still a political chess move.
And therein likes the difference why Buttigieg went from a nobody whose Mayorship covers a town fifteen times smaller than Julian Castro to arguably the dark horse. Buttigieg is playing a long game and the smart game whereas Beto peaked early.
Gun buyers, for sure. 
However I’m sorry but I never saw that stunning charisma but then that may be just my overall jadedness by this point. Or else O’Rourke was a victim of a reputation preceding him based on giving Ted Cruz a run for his money, and many were expecting to be knocked flat on their asses and then seeing him actually running he just could not light the fire. As **Boycott **states he was built up, not entirely out of his own design but out of other observers craving a figure to put up front.
I don’t know how many people he lost with that confusing little walkabout of his. But he’d been on the road, campaigning for Senator, for well over a year, while his wife handled the home front pretty much by herself. Then rather than spend some time at home, getting reacquainted with his family, helping out around the house, he went on that funky wandering thing he did last winter.
Maybe that worked for men in politics fifty years ago: they could go off and do what they did politically and leave their wives to deal with the home and the kids, and nobody would bat an eye. But that doesn’t play nearly as well in 2019 as it did in 1969. I bet I was far from the only one saying, “are you fucking kidding me??” when he did that.
I suspect a lot of dem voters realized that “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15” was a foolish position to take and that he wasn’t going to be very electable because he’d taken it, and that’s (part of) why he didn’t poll well.
Good point. I agree with him, but his stance made him unelectable in the general, which sealed my decision to not support him in this race.
Did you actually look at his polling from before and after that statement? Any effort at all involved in your analysis?