Beto O’Rourke 2020 campaign megathread

[Mr. Morden]

Since it now appears Beto is running, Will he enter the race in the next 2 weeks... or later?

I'm assuming within the next two weeks, and looks like it'll be via text:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=303677.msg6705452#msg6705452

The whole thing's kind of weird though.  O'Rourke took the unusual step of admitting publicly that he's made up his mind, and did so more than a couple of days before he was ready to announce what that decision was.  But the thing is, if the answer was no, he's not running, then there's no reason to delay the announcement.  He would just announce that immediately upon making the decision.  So now we effectively know that he's running, and yet he's not admitting it publicly.

[Mr. Morden]

The Club for Growth already has an anti-O'Rourke ad going up in Iowa:

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/10/beto-orourke-2020-attack-1214805

The anti-tax Club for Growth is expected to begin airing a two-minute commercial in Iowa this week aimed at dampening liberal support for O’Rourke, who's expected to enter the race any day. The spot paints the former Texas congressman as a politician dripping with "white male privilege" who's undeserving of the comparisons he's drawing to Barack Obama.

“With a charmed life like his, you can never really lose,” the ad concludes. “That’s why Beto’s running for president — because he can.”

The offensive represents the GOP’s first concerted effort to wreak havoc in the Democratic race, and it arrives as senior Republicans have begun deliberating how the party should seek to influence the Democratic primary. With President Donald Trump’s job approval mired in the low- to mid-40s, Republicans are starting to focus on ensuring he faces as weak a candidate as possible.

[Mr. Morden]

But Regarding the delay... To begin with- all of the current candidates had over a year to get ready to announce their campaign (decide to run... then have the infrastructure in place to hit the ground running in a National Campaign).  And most of those candidates delayed their announcement a lot longer than Beto if you consider when they began planning for such a National campaign.

So in addition to just the time it takes to set up a Presidential Campaign (to be able to hit the ground running)... Is the need to have a really impressive opening rally a potential reason for the delayed announcement... in that once he decided he was definitely running - it may take a little time to set up an opening that will live up to some of the large rally's Beto during the Senate campaign?

I don't think it's problematic at all for him to have delayed his announcement until this month or next month or whenever he wants to do it.  But ideally he should have gone about it like the other candidates did, which is to publicly pretend that he's still undecided up until the day that he makes his announcement.  The fact that he's said publicly that he's decided but won't tell us what the decision is yet looks rather silly, IMHO.  Not a big deal, just an example of him executing his rollout in a way that doesn't really make any sense, which might be a consequence of him being more of a newbie to the national stage than most of the other candidates.

[Mr. Morden]

https://twitter.com/VaughnHillyard/status/1107112389298794496

[Mr. Morden]

https://twitter.com/ericbradner/status/1107107761467330561

[Mr. Morden]

The irony is that Donald Trump might be the only major candidate for president whose ancestors did not own slaves

Everyone alive has ancestors who owned slaves (just like everyone alive has ancestors who *were* slaves), since slavery used to be common across the globe.  It's just a question of how far you want to go back in time.

[Mr. Morden]

John McCain was at 3% in Summer 2007

No, he was in the low teens.  There were only a handful of polls that had him below 10%:

link

[Mr. Morden]

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1158550534133112833