I cannot wait to see it fail.
I will link below to a couple of the latest mainstream media’s “oppositions” to Beto O’Rourke’s obviously approaching presidential candidacy. Although I am not sure about how exactly calculated they may be…some emanating from longtime pro-neocentrist rags like the NY Times, others simply reflecting the mistaken belief among many people that identity politics has a shot of really winning big in the coming election…my own take on it is as follows:
The mass media are pissed off…and (rightfully) frightened in this time of easily accessible public access to information. This access is rapidly shrinking the old media dynasties, access that (exactly as did Donald Trump, although for very different reasons), Beto O’Rourke has wisely used. He has not courted the old Makers of Consent media, instead favoring a direct appeal to voters of every stripe. (Also known as the “supermajority”…70+% or thereabouts of the U.S. population.)
As P.T.Barnum once said, “I don’t care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.”
Barnum.
A prophet in his own time.
O’Rourke?
Ditto
Watch.
Read on.
From The Atlantic (https:/www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/03/beto-orourkes-maybe-presidential-run-doub
le-standards/584701):
The Beto Odyssey
O’Rourke’s teasing approach to his potential presidential run makes uncomfortable assumptions about what political charisma looks like.– Megan Garber
It is not yet clear whether Beto O’Rourke is running for president. What is clear, however, is that in the course of making his decision, he has been going for a lot of runs. Head-clearing runs. Meaningful runs. In November–just after O’Rourke lost, by a slim margin, the U.S. Senate campaign he had waged against Ted Cruz in Texas–Beto shared the details of a jog he took during a morning snowfall in Washington, D.C. “I was concerned that I might slip, that the ground would be too slick,” the politician wrote, “but it was wet and grainy enough that traction wasn’t a problem. Cold but not too cold.” Later: “The sleet stinging my face, I wondered if the winds had changed too.”
Posts of this manner continued as Beto embarked on a winter road trip, Texas to Kansas to Colorado to New Mexico, meeting new people–finding new meaning–along the way. He narrated the journey in a style roughly suggestive of Hemingway, had Hemingway had access to a LiveJournal. “What followed was one of these transcendent moments in public life,” he wrote of an event at Pueblo Community College. “Something so raw and honest that you want to hold on to it, remember every word … a flow between people.”
It’s both a very old story–the political listening tour–and a relatively new one: an approach to political message-making that is inflected by the raw confessionalism of the social-media age. (“Have been stuck lately. In and out of a funk,” Beto wrote in January, teasing the trip. “Maybe if I get moving, on the road, meet people, learn about what’s going on where they live, have some adventure, go where I don’t know and I’m not known, it’ll clear my head, reset, I’ll think new thoughts, break out of the loops I’ve been stuck in.”)
The implied subject of the funk was the question of whether will Beto will join the 2020 race for the Democratic presidential nomination; its implied conclusion was that he would come back having made his decision. But the hero went forth, and then made his return, with no news to share. Oprah interviewed him in February, and he told her that he’d make his choice by the end of the month; he has yet to announce. He has planned a trip to Iowa. He has hosted a protest rally. He has dangled news, but not made it. And many of those watching this months-long and very public form of soul-searching have begun to lose the very thing that Beto’s lengthy blog posts have assumed people will have for him: patience. Politico, this weekend, summed up the general feeling like this: “The politician who built his entire persona on a thread of authenticity–crisscrossing Texas while eschewing pollsters and political consultants in his Senate run last year–is now manufacturing suspense.”
The most generous reading of Beto’s publicly teasing approach to his potential run is that he is taking seriously the commitment a presidential run demands, and that he is, at the same time, attempting to rewrite some of the staid rules of retail politics, finding new ways to connect with the public and refusing to care what the pundits might think about the effort. (A flow between people.) Here is another reading, however: In a primary that is, of its own accord, so interested and invested in finding new ways to go about old business, Beto’s approach is the opposite of revolutionary. As he superficially challenges convention, he is also ratifying regressive ideas about what an appealing candidate–what political charisma itself–really looks like.
This weekend, Beto, like several of his fellow politicians, made an appearance at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. He was there, officially, not to talk policy, as many of his already declared fellow Democrats had come to do, but to promote Running With Beto, the soon-to-be-aired HBO documentary following the candidate as he ran his senatorial campaign against Cruz. Beto was there, effectively, as a political celebrity, his lack of official candidacy helping him to avoid a full measure of scrutiny, his star filtered through the haze of manufactured mystery. Beto’s team, after his appearance at the festival, sent an email to supporters. “If you’re on the edge of your seat about Beto’s decision around a potential 2020 run for president, you’re not alone,” the note said, later adding, “There’s been an outpouring of speculation, excitement, and support from people across the country–everyone eagerly waiting for the news.”
—snip—
Many of Beto’s fellow Democrats–many of them women and people of color–have spent these past months working and organizing and staffing up and reaching out and proposing bold new policies and defending them in public, projecting confidence and competence, not only because that is what politics demands of them, but also because such tight control over themselves and their message is the only narrow avenue afforded to them. They lack the luxury of latitude. O’Rourke, on the other hand, teases and takes his time, seemingly trusting his own charm, apparently understanding that the system has been built for his particular set of talents and that devoted fans will greet him on the other side of his journey. He leaves his wife at home to care for their young kids and goes out into the world, to wax poetic about the changing of the winds.
—snip—
In that sense, Beto’s road trip–and with it, his meandering road to a possible run for president–is precisely what he apparently intended it to be. It is a journey of discovery. A revelation. “This could never, ever be a woman,” CNN’s Nia-Malika Henderson wrote in January, in an analysis headlined “Beto’s Excellent Adventure Drips With White Male Privilege.” On Monday, following the events at South by Southwest, The New York Times pointed out the same. (“Female Democratic strategists have grown increasingly frustrated as they’ve watched Mr. O’Rourke jump on his single-speed bike, read his emotional posts from his road trip, and seen him slip into the premiere of a documentary about his Senate campaign,” Lisa Lerer reported.)
—snip—
I’ll stop there.
O’Rourke is being opposed because he is a man. A white man, at that!!!
This could never, ever be a woman…
Give me a break!!!
I call bullshit, right there!!!
Why the hell not?
If say Elizabeth Warren…or any other, younger female politician who is married with children…decided to leave her children with her partner and go out alone on the road to gauge the temperment of the times…she could easily do so, provided of course that she was comfortable with not being surrounded by her various handlers, bodyguards and other gofers. Other, less famous women travel alone by car through the flyover zones every day of the week! She would probably be attacked by the neocentrist media in the same manner as AOC is being attacked, of course, but she certainly could do it, and it would ultimately profit her candidacy just the same as have O’Rourke’s actions.
Here’s more of the same oppositional tactic…plus a hidden variation…this time from our lovely NY Times, The Paper of (NeoCentrist) Record. [www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/us/politics/on-politics-beto-2020-women.html] Emphasis mine:
The Privilege of Being Beto
As Beto O’Rourke moves closer to a presidential run, the unconventional way he’s spent the four months since losing his Senate bid (Metallica concerts! Road trips! Viral Instagrams!) is raising some concerns in the Democratic Party, as I wrote about today with my colleague Matt Flegenheimer.
But there’s another, perhaps slightly less-covered piece of Mr. O’Rourke’s rollout story: Female Democratic strategists have grown increasingly frustrated as they’ve watched Mr. O’Rourke jump on his single-speed bike, read his emotional posts from his road trip and seen him slip into the premiere of a documentary about his Senate campaign.
Imagine, they say, if Beto were Betsy. What would the reception have been if a female candidate left her three small children home and spent several weeks traveling the country, posting stream-of-consciousness diary entries? Or if she chose to forgo a Senate race that would provide a greater opportunity for victory?
In quiet and not-so-quiet complaints, Democratic strategists argue that the relatively positive reception to Mr. O’Rourke’s untraditional approach is evidence, yet again, of the deep double standard female candidates face. While his defenders argue that Mr. O’Rourke can’t be blamed for gender dynamics he didn’t create, his critics say he is being given a benefit of the doubt that wouldn’t be extended to a woman or a candidate of color.
“Maybe I’d been hoping for some kind of connection that day and hadn’t found it,” he wrote in one of those diary posts, from Ulysses, Kan. “I called Amy. Kids were in the car, she was a little distracted, we didn’t connect either. Maybe you could meet people at a bar she said as we hung up.”
Try to picture Senators Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris publishing those words. The female presidential candidates, it’s probably worth noting, all pursued a highly conventional approach, jumping into the race early, rolling out policy plans and hosting events in key primary states.
—snip—
Here’s the real meat of the NY Times’s complaint, and it’s not about his maleness, his race, his youth or any other damned thing.
It’s about how he’s chosen to run!!!
The other candidates…male, female, black, white, old, young…have all “pursued a highly conventional approach, jumping into the race early, rolling out policy plans and hosting events in key primary states.”
Yessirree Bob!!!
They’re doing it the right way. “Our” way!!! You know…so we can easily follow them and print reams of bullshit about their actions. And thus we can
judgmentally…errr, ahhh we meant accurately, of course…criticize anything that they say and/or do that might go against the interests of the Deep State.
I call bullshit a second time!!!
Onward and downward…
Or…upward, as the case seems to me might very well be for O’Rourke.
Can he best the mass media?
Trump did, and he was…and remains…a total asshole.
This guy is not an asshole. Not by any means, no matter how condescendingly the media may be treating him early on. Once he begins to pile up the numbers…and that will happen as soon as that HBO documentary about his Texas candidacy hits the airwaves…all but the most neocentrist/neoconservative media will begin to pile on.
Watch.
Why?
The good ol’ profit motive, of course.
He’ll be big news!!!
Watch.
As far as the whole “identity politics” thing against him goes? The “White men are all to be be considered suspect (And probably guilty of something!!!) because…well, because G.W. Bush/Dick Cheney/Ronald Reagan/Richard Nixon/Hitler/Caligula/Whoever The Fuck!!!”
Let me ask you a few questions.
Where does the neocentrist murderer Barack Obama fit in here?
How about the various female heads of state during the last 50 years or so of NATO? Blood galore on their hands as well.
All of the kings and queens, chiefs and chieftanesses of every race on earth since history began?
Murderers and hustlers, most of them.
Just sayin’…
I personally refuse to be judged by anything other than my actions, and I refuse to judge anyone else by any other metric.
End of story as far as I am concerned.
This guy’s for real.
Good for real!!!
And I think he is…wth the help of the other New Democrats of every gender, race and age…going to revolutionize the Democratic Party.
At least…that is my fervent hope.
Yours?
Biden again?
Please!!!
Some Artificial Intelligence-chosen “balanced” ticket? Balanced racially and in terms of gender? Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” redux, only this time Woke and #Me too-ed?
That might work to win against a Trumpist ticket…hell, by this time an animated scarecrow would probably be able to beat Trump.
But it will not reach the supermajority!!!
Bet on it.
And without a landslide of historic proportions in 2020, it’ll be Scylla and Charybdis all over again.
More stalemate.
You want that?
Vote your conscience.
If you can find it.
Please.
Later…
AG