Booman wrote a piece yesterday titled “The Billionaires Waited Too Long to Panic”. (http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2019/2/11/151246/287) It was about how the old-line centrist Republican billionaires appear to have waited too long to be able to effectively oppose Donald Trump.
His last sentence was:
The #NeverTrumpers are going to pay a price for their errors for a change. It’s exactly what the people want.
I loved it!!! The whole article, especially that last sentence.
Why?
Read on.
Beto O’Rourke came home to El Paso Texas yesterday. Home, home on the range, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.
And he stood the fuck up to Donald Trump in a confrontational way that no one else in Democratic Party has yet even begun to match!!! Not a discouraging word in his whole day. Just the joy of morally correct combat, which is exactly what the people of the U.S….the good ones, anyway, who outnumber the not-so-good ones by about 3000 to 1 if my own observations during my travels through all of the levels of U.S. society for the last 50 years (especially hispanic, black and working class white levels, which are where I have made both my home and most of my living) are any indication.
Surrounded by about 15,000 of his Texans…comprised of every race, religion and economic level that lives on the border, bet on it…he opened his next campaign. Bet on that, too. He’s got some chops. Political chops. Media chops as well. He’s gonna keep the media in thrall while he “makes up his mind” for a while longer, but as far as I can see, it’s been made up for months. Presidential run or Senate run…he’s the next Dem star.
`This is where we make our stand’: Beto O’Rourke finally looks like a 2020 candidate
With Donald Trump holding a rally in O’Rourke’s backyard, the former Texas congressman takes it up a notch. By David Siders 02/12/2019 08:27 AM EST
EL PASO — If Beto O’Rourke runs for president, he should thank President Donald Trump for the kick in the pants.
For three months, O’Rourke had drifted in and out of public view, slipping slightly in public opinion polls as he vacillated on a 2020 bid.
But Trump’s appearance in O’Rourke’s hometown on Monday night served to elevate the former Texas congressman as a potential rival. And as Trump confronted O’Rourke at a campaign-style rally on an issue central to both of their political identities — immigration and the border wall — O’Rourke seized the opportunity to re-establish his footing.
“Yeah, I’m back in the mix around an issue that could not be more important for our country and for our community,” he told POLITICO before addressing thousands of screaming supporters at a baseball field steps from the coliseum where Trump was redoubling his call for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
To oppose Trump’s agenda, O’Rourke said, “All of us right now have a responsibility to do all that we can, and this is me doing my best.”
If O’Rourke was testing Democrats’ appetite for his potential candidacy, the signs he saw on Monday were reaffirming — beginning with a march to the rally that was so thick with supporters that organizers linked arms in a circle around O’Rourke and his family to keep them moving through the crowd. Young Democrats rushed the line, wearing “Viva Beto!” buttons and hoisting “Beto 2020” signs. Chants of “Beto, Beto” echoed under freeway overpasses as O’Rourke and the throng passed through.
“You did good, El Paso!” O’Rourke said when he arrived at the baseball field on a cold, windswept night. “We have so much to give, so much to show the rest of the country, and we’re doing it right now.”
The speech — and O’Rourke’s promotion of it beforehand — marked a pivot for O’Rourke from a contemplative period of wayfaring to a more traditional brand of campaign politics following his closer-than-expected loss to Republican Ted Cruz in the Texas Senate race last year.
Engaging the president on the wall, O’Rourke did not retreat to his online journal or livestream a conversation with his dental hygienist about life on the border, as he did last month. Nor did he break for the interstate for a soul-searching journey through the Southwest.
Instead, O’Rourke did what any Democrat tilting toward a run for president might do. He participated in a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon, before Trump arrived for his campaign rally here. Then he timed his speech to bracket Trump’s appearance, ensuring side-by-side coverage.
“There’s certain things where you just can’t go off in the desert and act like Job in the wilderness,” said New Hampshire attorney and Democratic activist Jay Surdukowski, who co-chaired Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in New Hampshire and who traveled to El Paso for O’Rourke’s rally. “You’ve got to get real, and he really is showing he can turn it on and get right back in the campaign mode.”
Trump was dismissive of O’Rourke, mocking him as “a young man who’s got very little going for himself except he’s got a great first name.” But even Republicans could appreciate O’Rourke’s deft political play. Jeff Roe, who was Cruz’s chief strategist, called his handling of Trump’s visit a “home run swing.”
“It shows that if he can find a balance between being smart and strategic and a [yin] to the president’s yang, that’s what Democrats are seeking,” Roe said.
—snip—
“Oh, man, I get to be with and behind my community,” O’Rourke said backstage, along the backstop of the baseball diamond. “I love it … This is America, this is the border, this is El Paso. It’s all of those things at their best. It’s so positive, there’s no hate, there’s nothing negative in the slightest about it.”
Like I said…not a discouraging word!!!
Then O’Rourke removed his jacket and climbed onto a platform in the infield to address the crowd.
“We are the example that the United States of America needs right now,” he said to cheers. “This is where we make our stand!”
Stand made.
Started, at the very least.
Does anyone really think that the stuck-in-a-hole, stuck-in-the-past DNC can effectively oppose O’Rourke’s candidacy with the same tactics that they used on Bernie Sanders in 2016?
I don’t.
Why?
Because he’s exactly what the people want!!!
Watch.
AG
P.S. Oh Lord!!! Grant us some stand up, one-to-one debates between O’Rourke and Trump. (Provided of course that Trump is still in office, still running/not in prison/not decamped to a welcoming foreign country by 2020.)
Please!!!
P.S. As is its wont, that used up piece of DNC (d)riftwood has weighed in on this post with its usual McCarthyite pack of lies. Below is my ongoing answer to such claptrap.Make up your own minds.
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A group…or perhaps better, a cadre…of people on this site have tried everything in their power to discourage criticism of the Democratic Party as it stands today. They automatically downrate such posts and have endlessly attacked several posters as liars, fools, pro-Trump trolls and/or spreaders of Russian propaganda. When effectively rebutted, they simply ignore the rebuttal and repeat the same attacks. These McCarthyite tactics are intended to exhaust the patience of the attacked posters and discourage others from reading or posting similar material. It has worked on a few posters, who have simply given up. It has not worked on me. I initially answered their attacks with attempts at reason. After realizing that this was a total waste of time, I have pretty much stopped replying to them. My comments and articles on this site are my replies. Read what I have to say; consider what they have to say and how it is said, and then make up your own minds. Thank you-AG
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Over Warren? Or Gillibrand? Or Harris? Or Klobuchar? Or Booker? Cause first he’s got to declare, then he’s got take on all of these formidable candidates, (plus probably 10 more) before he gets to debate Trump.
And while I like O’Rourke, I think it’s time we let women run things for awhile and any of the above listed (esp. Warren and KG) are more than capable.
Yes.
Over all of them.
Why?
Gut feeling. He will reach more people’s hearts and souls. Next best? To my mind? Elizabeth Warren. Why? She has fire, too. The following has nothing whatsoever to do with her sex, but she has yet to prove that she can reach people on the emotional level that is O’Rourke’s single strongest attribute.
He’s got JFK-level charisma, and he has already proven that he knows how to use it..
After that?
None of the above.
Why?
Because none of them have that honest fire, as far as I can see. Or at least they don’t know how to channel it. Booker acts it well, but there is something…insincere and calculated…about his act. I have taught in Newark off and on for almost 20 years, and watched his rise closely. He’s always been a total self-promoter. I do not trust him. Like I said…gut reaction.
Gillibrand? Harris? Klobuchar, etc.?
I want to see it!!!
Chances are…sigh…that they will be running against Trump. I don’t think that any of them have the personal wattage to beat him.
And I think O’Rourke does.
Will it happen?
I hope so.
AG
Here, Arthur Gilroy continues his tiresome and transparent preparations to campaign for Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans in 2019 and 2020.
A couple of weeks ago, Arthur admitted that he was ready to campaign against the Democratic Party POTUS nominee.
Who will be the arbiter of whether the front-runners in the POTUS primary and eventual Democratic Party nominee “ARE NOT DNC-PRODUCED, APPROVED AND INSTALLED CREATURES?”
YES. It will be Arthur, a man so recklessly regressive that he wants to “BREAK UP THE U.S.!!!” and end all Federal social welfare and civil rights protections. As much grief as I give him for being dishonest and deceptive, I will give Arthur substantial credit for refusing to walk away from his evangelism for Ron Paul and his specific and repeated defenses for a long personal list of extremely regressive policy preferences and social views.
Arthur has stated here that unemployment insurance saps personal initiative and “Welfare” and other giveaways rather than jobs, honest work and adequate pay hurt whoever they touch in the long run.
Arthur believes not only that States should be freed to deny multiple groups of Americans their voting and other civil rights, he wants to dissolve New York State so the northern portion of the State could engage in denial of contraceptives and forced birth policies if government officials chose to do so. It’s valuable to note here that Ron Paul not only has expressed the desire to free States to pass anti-female laws such as those, he holds a strong and public moral opposition to abortion. Paul also authored a Federal Bill which declared that life begins at conception, a Bill which would have taken away from the Federal Judiciary any jurisdiction to rule on the constitutionality of all anti-abortion Laws.
There are many, many more radical right policies and social views which Arthur has declared and defended here. This is the old white man who intends to be the sole arbiter here of whether the Democratic Party and its POTUS nominees have met his test of having moved “…way left and way quicker…”.
What a fucking sham.
By fixing on one undeclared Presidential nominee, Arthur is setting himself up to campaign for Donald Trump again in 2020 by coming here to attempt to persuade progressives to deny their votes for the Democratic Party nominee, just as he did here against the Democratic Party nominee from August to November 2016. In such a large field, the odds are against Beto and literally every other candidate as well. He brings zero evidence that the DNC dislikes O’Rourke and is planning to undermine Beto’s undeclared campaign, yet he declared himself prepared to oppose any other Dem Party nominee.
He declared himself prepared to do so even though many of the declared POTUS candidates wish to take the Nation “…way left and way quicker…” than Beto has articulated. It makes no sense for Arthur to be pushing all his chips in for Beto, unless Arthur’s personal ideology and policy preferences are served by attempting to do his part to split the community and convince Frog Ponders to deny their votes for the only viable opponent to Trump.
With the unabated shit talking Arthur engages in here against Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Schumer, and his careless failure to differentiate between the votes and ideologies of the two Party Congressional Caucuses, Arthur is quite obviously also planning to campaign for Congressional Republicans as well by encouraging progressives here to deny their votes to Democratic Party Congressional candidates. Arthur’s claim of terrific support for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is made meaningless by the fact that the Congressmember has consistently called for a much more vigorous set of Federal domestic programs, while Arthur literally wants to do away with all Federal programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
He may decide to continue to participate here at the Frog Pond, even though he regularly talks shit about this community broadly. Arthur will not get away with attempting to move his regressive and vile policy preferences by splitting the progressive movement and Democratic Party. He will meet opposition and the extreme right wing ideology he has developed over the years will be called out continually.
You lie. Supporting O’Rourke is not campaigning for Trump.
You are correct in asserting that supporting O’Rourke is not campaigning for Trump.
Supporting O’Rourke and then proceeding to trash the Democratic POTUS nominee to this progressive community during the general election campaign if the winner of the primary fails to please him, as Arthur has directly asserted he is prepared to do: THAT’S campaigning for Trump.
No it isn’t. Exercising one choice to not vote or to vote Third Party is neither campaigning for nor voting for Trump.
You can’t seem to wrap your head around the fact that your candidate was just as unqualified as Trump and was perhaps the most corrupt politician of my lifetime and I grew up in Richard J. Daley’s Chicago!
Opposing that reeking pile of crap is not supporting Trump!
You, however, support bribery and influence peddling, so who are you to complain about someone else’s choice?
. . . to campaigning for Trump. It increases the probability of him winning, and the disastrous results of that, which we’re now trying to survive. It amounts to de facto “campaigning” for him. Your quibble is entirely empty semantics. You’re an enabler of evil, as is ag.
And, as usual, the disconnect between Reality and your insanely over-the-top description of Clinton (“just as unqualified as Trump”[!!!], “perhaps the most corrupt politician of my lifetime” [!!!!], “reeking pile of crap” [!!!!!] simply verifies the depth and depravity of your CDS (Clinton Derangement Syndrome).
Hey, Voice, it’s not 2016 any more.
Arthur is already openly contemplating campaigning against the Democratic Party’s 2020 Presidential nominee. This is his position, even after we have experienced the vile performances of our terrible President and his kakistocratic Administration.
Your defenses here are weak.
Generally agree with you here. If O’Rourke has a weakness, in my mind, it’s economics and the drag on the economy from economic inequality. Not to mention that if we want to fix racism (or sexism, or even have a meaningful democracy) we have to fix economic inequality–as Martin Luther King recognized clearly, and as William Barber recognizes. Elizabeth Warren gets this, as does Bernie Sanders.
Generally agree with you here. If O’Rourke has a weakness, in my mind, it’s economics and the drag on the economy from economic inequality. Not to mention that if we want to fix racism (or sexism, or even have a meaningful democracy) we have to fix economic inequality–as Martin Luther King understood clearly, and as William Barber understands. Elizabeth Warren gets this, as does Bernie Sanders.
. . . sack of shit ag has yet again shat out its favorite pack-of-lies-start-to-finish here:
“Below is my ongoing answer to such claptrap.”
It’s all kabuki for Arthur.
As oaguabonita notes, Arthur never puts forward good faith arguments. He never refutes anyone or answers criticism. He just blusters and bullshits and flings insults.
His Beto O’Rourke cult of personality is devoid of substance.