Beto O’Rourke 2020 campaign megathread

[John Dule]

Why is Beto not taking part in any of the CNN Town Halls?  

Probably because he doesn't have any policy positions to defend.

Well said. The substance-free candidates of this cycle know to stick to their stump speeches.

[John Dule]

Maybe, Just Maybe, O'Rourke is a genuinely unimpressive trustfund baby who gained an unwarranted national profile from a slobbering media that hated Ted Cruz? Now that there are other shiny objects for democratic voters, his whole schtick isn't selling anymore

Maybe just maybe half the people in this thread are overreacting and the vast majority of the people who will vote in the primary don't even know or care what's going on?

Maybe, just maybe, the phrase "maybe, just maybe" is a tad overused these days. Maybe.

[John Dule]

God, what have politics come to.

Imagine traveling back in time 20 years and telling someone that your job is to write "Tweets" for your congressman's dog.

[John Dule]

DeSantis has some of the highest approval ratings in the country and has reached out to Democrats in his cabinet-level appointments.

[John Dule]

Lol @ party of facts. You believe scientists when they say global warming is real (which it is) then don't believe them when they say gender dysphoria is a mental illness (which it is).

And don't lecture us on fake news until you stop watching biased bogus such as MSNBC and CNN.

Stop tormenting this sad boomer. He's clearly not comfortable posting outside of Facebook.

[John Dule]

[John Dule]

That ad doesn't mean anything. No PACS means no donations from PACS, not no promotion from any PACS. GET INTELLIGENT FOLKS.

It's all about the optics. And "No PACS" means "No PACS;" if they meant something else they should've said that.

[John Dule]

CNN: Beto O'Rourke is polling worse than ever

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/11/politics/beto-orourke-poll-of-the-week/index.html

Not even remotely surprising. The man has no unique policy proposals and even his supporters can't explain why they like him (aside from his sheer skill at demagoguery). He's run a terrible campaign so far, and he was unqualified from the start. Still can't understand why so much of Atlas thought he'd be a major player in this race.

[John Dule]

CNN: Beto O'Rourke is polling worse than ever

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/11/politics/beto-orourke-poll-of-the-week/index.html

Not even remotely surprising. The man has no unique policy proposals and even his supporters can't explain why they like him (aside from his sheer skill at demagoguery). He's run a terrible campaign so far, and he was unqualified from the start. Still can't understand why so much of Atlas thought he'd be a major player in this race.

So far Beto has had almost a national media blackout (certainly compared to most of the frontrunners)... this explains the polling drop imo.  But now it appears he is starting to do more national media- assuming he ramps this up, his polling will also increase. 

I also think, contrary to what some think, the debates will help Beto.  Many, wrongly imo, have the impression that Beto is not very articulate regarding policy or isn't as smart as many of the candidates, etc ... given this low bar, I think Beto will easy beat expectations in debates and will be surprised that he is very knowledgeable regarding policy matters. If this in fact does happen, he will get a good boost following the debates as well.

I remember watching the debate between him and Cruz, and wondering why Democrats chose to put him up for office in Texas of all places. He'll probably play better to Democratic primary voters, but I still don't think his policies are anywhere near specific enough for him to defend them on the stage next to Biden and Sanders.

[John Dule]

O'Rourke's slump can be attributed to the fact that he is a total media creation and without 24/7 media fellation people have discovered he is a pathetic trust fund baby with no skills or accomplishments

Says a Trump supporter.

Whataboutism.

[John Dule]

He never had a chance.

Please don't say you're just now realizing this.

[John Dule]

Imagine still being excited about Beto O'Rourke in June of 2019.

[John Dule]

Imagine still being excited about Beto O'Rourke in June of 2019.

imagine being a libertarian...ever...

It's even lazier trolling than his increasing pathetic attempts to start a discussion on race and IQ in the Joe Biden thread. (Which, happily, the entire forum ignored.)

This is just flat-out slander. I did no such thing.

[John Dule]

Imagine still being excited about Beto O'Rourke in June of 2019.

imagine being a libertarian...ever...

It's even lazier trolling than his increasing pathetic attempts to start a discussion on race and IQ in the Joe Biden thread. (Which, happily, the entire forum ignored.)

This is just flat-out slander. I did no such thing.

If you're talking about this post, then you've completely misinterpreted it:

Can any leftist Biden critics here fuse together the Atlas narrative that Joe Biden is an apologist for racism and the plain fact that a huge portion of African-Americans support him, without implicitly stating that black voters are "low-information?"

My point was that Biden is clearly not a racist, and that to make that argument you basically have to argue that black voters are "voting against their own interests." I find that kind of argument stupid whether it's being applied to African-Americans supporting Biden or to blue-collar whites who voted for Trump. I was pointing out how stupid and condescending such an argument is, and how it significantly undermines that moronic Atlas narrative that Biden is some kind of apologist for the KKK.

Then again, numerous people recommended that post, and they all seemed to understand it perfectly fine. So I'm going to go ahead and assume that this misrepresentation of my views is more motivated by deliberate maliciousness than by accidental misreading.

[John Dule]

If you're talking about this post, then you've completely misinterpreted it:

Can any leftist Biden critics here fuse together the Atlas narrative that Joe Biden is an apologist for racism and the plain fact that a huge portion of African-Americans support him, without implicitly stating that black voters are "low-information?"

My point was that Biden is clearly not a racist, and that to make that argument you basically have to argue that black voters are "voting against their own interests." I find that kind of argument stupid whether it's being applied to African-Americans supporting Biden or to blue-collar whites who voted for Trump. I was pointing out how stupid and condescending such an argument is, and how it significantly undermines that moronic Atlas narrative that Biden is some kind of apologist for the KKK.

Then again, numerous people recommended that post, and they all seemed to understand it perfectly fine. So I'm going to go ahead and assume that this misrepresentation of my views is more motivated by deliberate maliciousness than by accidental misreading.

If that's all that you meant, fair enough. The attitude that you criticize is condescending and ignorant. But I wasn't the only person to take you that way, perhaps because there are obvious explanations for Joe Biden retaining widespread black support regardless of how problematic his comments were. Politicians far more racist than even the most outrageous caricature of Joe Biden have won large portions of the black vote.

Your remark would have confused me less and amused me more if it referenced Elizabeth Warren's consistently decent numbers among Democratic People of Means.

I wasn't aware that anyone had found that comment confusing. Perhaps those responses got buried in the thread, but I didn't see any. I'll post a clarification.

To stress this point though: Black voters have a lot of options in this primary but they still make up a large portion of Biden's support (40% according to one poll, if I recall correctly). It's not like they're being railroaded into choosing between Biden and a candidate who's even more racially insensitive. Therefore, I find the notion among some Atlas users that Biden is an apologist for segregation to be implicitly insulting to black voters. To make that argument, you basically have to say that they're either not paying attention to the process, or that they're only voting for Biden because he was Obama's VP. I've criticized this condescending "voting against your own interests" argument many times in many other situations.

I may have overestimated how prevalent this mentality was on Atlas, but I still thought that this was why nobody responded to that post, which is why I quoted it a second time. Anyway, for the record, I've never tried to start a """conversation""" about race and IQ on this site. We can probably leave this here. Thanks for the follow-up.

[John Dule]

Drop out imminent

I have not doubted this moment would come for a single second of a single day since he announced this doomed campaign.

[John Dule]

It's funny how much this forum hates Beto. He's the Marco Rubio of 2020.

Not too long ago, the forum was mostly on board with the prospect of his potential candidacy. That all went to hell, and it started with his actual announcement; it was punctuated by his awful debate performance, second worse only to Williamson.

It's frightening how easily people bandwagon onto candidates who are basically media fabrications, even on a politically aware site like Atlas.

[John Dule]

This man is a clown:

https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1146454733911146496

"We need to have a conversation" is just about the lowest of all political platitudes. You're a politician-- you already have a soap box to stand on, and people are listening. This campaign is the conversation; we're already having it.

[John Dule]

I've got my "I told you so" signature primed and ready for when this doofus drops out.

[John Dule]

Legitimately shocked to hear that Beto O'Rourke, the man who announces tax policies through his dog's Twitter account, is not tremendously succeeding in this campaign.

[John Dule]

Will Beto's health care plan cover the cancer I got after reading this tweet?

https://twitter.com/First_Dog_USA/status/1144067534372691968

[John Dule]

You can tell a major presidential campaign has truly cratered when its Atlas megathread is unstickied.

The real question is why it was stickied in the first place.

[John Dule]

You can tell a major presidential campaign has truly cratered when its Atlas megathread is unstickied.

The real question is why it was stickied in the first place.

"Something something the next Barack Obama" -- circa Winter 2018

I have absolutely no respect for the political instincts of people who thought Beto O'Rourke would do well in this campaign. If you legitimately can't see the difference between O'Rourke and Obama, then you're just an obscenely poor judge of character.

[John Dule]

His Reddit AMA has been a disaster.

Someone asked him basically the same thing I've been saying on this site for months. As I feared, these people have no idea what they're doing:

[John Dule]

It's like he's being run by a computer algorithm. He searches the questions for keywords and then regurgitates his policy plank for that issue, regardless of whether or not it actually addresses the question. He can only speak using pre-programmed responses.