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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