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Beto O'Rourke set to launch 2020 bid with Texas homecoming 'This is our moment': Beto O'Rourke attacks Trump and calls for unity
(about 1 hour later)
As a mix of his all-American roots with the Spanish culture and language he loves, the setting for Beto O’Rourke’s formal presidential campaign launch in El Paso, Texas on Saturday could not have been more apt. On the left, the stage was flanked by a shop selling baseball hats and Levi’s jeans. On the right, an outlet touting “lo mejor en musica en Español”. Beto O’Rourke, the former punk rocker from a border town in Texas, formally launched his insurgent campaign for the US presidency on Saturday by denouncing fear and division promoted by Donald Trump and calling for a revival of inclusive American democracy.
Five blocks behind the spot where O’Rourke was due to speak, at the Paso del Norte crossing over the Rio Grande into Juarez, Mexico, a group of desperate Central American asylum-seekers were being held behind a wire fence and under a bridge, as a side-effect of Donald Trump’s immigration clampdown.
Beto O'Rourke goes to Nevada in search of ideas – 'I'm all ears'Beto O'Rourke goes to Nevada in search of ideas – 'I'm all ears'
Even before O’Rourke, 46, had appeared at the start of a three-city dash that would take in Houston and the Texas capital, Austin, he had made powerful statements. The location of his rally so close to the detained migrants under the bridge was a thinly-disguised rebuke to the president, who has claimed a widely disputed national emergency and on Friday threatened to close the border next week. Speaking to several thousand supporters in his home town, El Paso, O’Rourke unleashed an impassioned attack on the president’s border crackdown. Just a few blocks behind his back stood the Paso del Norte bridge across the Rio Grande river into Mexico. Beneath it, while he spoke, exhausted migrants were still being penned in by US immigration authorities.
On Friday, O’Rourke visited the bridge and lamented: “Kids, moms, and families trapped for days at a time in our name.” The migrants were being detained “just three or four blocks from here under the international bridge, behind chain-link fence and barbed wire”, O’Rourke thundered, punching the air in the demonstrative style that has become his trademark. “They are our fellow human beings, and deserve to be treated like our fellow human beings.”
In a Facebook post, the former Democratic congressman said he would “continue pushing for answers so we can put an end to this”. O’Rourke has had a difficult start to his campaign, in which some of the glitz of last November’s Senate run appears to have worn off. He has come under fire for displaying more charisma than policy expertise, for enjoying the unearned privilege of a white man with Kennedy-like good looks, and for lacking a progressive edge to his politics.
El Paso was where O’Rourke last November marked the end of his US Senate race against the Republican Ted Cruz. He narrowly lost that contest, but it didn’t stop him delivering a victory oration, telling the crowd he had “never felt so hopeful”. He was also forced to apologize for making jokes on the campaign trail about his wife Amy bringing up their three kids, “sometimes with my help”.
Since he declared his White House run two weeks ago, he has deployed his trademark campaigning style of road-tripping around the country, driving a Dodge Caravan over 11 days through eight states beginning with Iowa, where the Democratic nomination process kicks off in February. He also took in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, all of which are likely to play a charged role in the primaries or presidential election proper. If there is some substance to the criticism that he needed to sharpen up his act for a national audience, O’Rourke appears to have heard it. On Saturday he delivered a firebrand’s call for a reshaping of US democracy.
Along the way, O’Rourke has had to contend with a reception that has been more lukewarm than the steaming one he enjoyed in Texas last year. Pundits have questioned whether he is suffering from an acute dose of white privilege, especially after he was forced to apologize for making jokes on the campaign trail about his wife Amy bringing up their three kids, “sometimes with my help”. “All people, no Pacs, all the time,” he proclaimed, in reference to his extraordinary ability to raise campaign cash, $6.1m just on day one of his presidential run, without involving super-rich donors and political action committees. Then he hurled himself into a critique of the state of the nation.
His fondness for making stump speeches standing atop bar counters has also attracted wry comment bordering on ridicule. “We must ask ourselves how this, the wealthiest, most powerful country on the face of the planet, has found itself in such a perilous position,” he said. “For too long in this country the powerful have maintained their privilege at the expense of the powerless.
The drubbing he has experienced in the mainstream and social media appears to have prompted some recalibration in O’Rourke’s approach. He ran in the Texas Senate race as a countercultural outsider, proudly eschewing political strategists, focus groups and polling. “They have used fear and division in the same way that our current president uses fear and division … to make us angry, to make us afraid of ourselves and one another.”
This week he made a pointed concession to professionalizing his team by appointing an experienced and much sought-after operative, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, as campaign manager. The unrestrained intervention of big money, where politicians can choose their voters and the supreme court can decide in its Citizens United ruling that corporations are people and money a form of speech, had he said left the US government “in thrall to those who can pay for access” and the country at risk “of being a democracy in name only”.
Despite the patchy start, the crowd at O’Rourke’s official launch rally in El Paso on Saturday were showing no wavering. Lorena Garcia, 45, a housewife from the city, said that for many months she had stopped listening to the news because she found Trump’s attacks on migrants and others so upsetting. O’Rourke promised that as president he will sign a new voting rights act to end gerrymandering and remove big money from elections. The pledge resonated with his supporters.
So did the rallying cry which he put to use last November: the desire to reunite a divided country. El Paso residents in the crowd responded positively to the call.
Lorena Garcia, 45, a housewife from the city, said that for many months she had stopped listening to the news because she found Trump’s attacks on migrants and others so upsetting.
“But when I started hearing Beto it gave me hope,” she said. “He was so positive I began to think things could be different.”“But when I started hearing Beto it gave me hope,” she said. “He was so positive I began to think things could be different.”
Victor Pina, 49, and Jason Phillips, 44, had flown from Sacramento in California wearing “Beto for president” T-shirts they had designed themselves in the rainbow colors of the LGBT movement. They said they saw O’Rourke as someone who could unite divided America.Victor Pina, 49, and Jason Phillips, 44, had flown from Sacramento in California wearing “Beto for president” T-shirts they had designed themselves in the rainbow colors of the LGBT movement. They said they saw O’Rourke as someone who could unite divided America.
Phillips pointed to the bridge just down the road where the migrants were being penned in: “It makes me think of Ellis Island, where immigrants were brought to a new life under the Statue of Liberty. How did this country change from that to holding people under that bridge?” Phillips pointed to the bridge just down the road where the migrants were being held: “It makes me think of Ellis Island, where immigrants were brought to a new life under the Statue of Liberty. How did this country change from that to holding people under that bridge?”
Beto O'Rourke: just how green is the Texas Democrat?Beto O'Rourke: just how green is the Texas Democrat?
O’Rourke’s travails have in part been a product of inevitable growing pains as he transitions from a politician appealing to 29 million Texans to one who must court 327 million Americans. It is also the result of an exceptionally crowded and diverse pool of Democratic candidates, with 14 people campaigning, including five women, two African Americans, a Latino American and a contender vying to be the first openly gay president. The edgier tone of O’Rourke’s launch speech may help him gain traction as he seeks to transition from a politician appealing to 29 million Texans to one who must court 327 million Americans. He is also having to cope with an exceptionally crowded and diverse pool of Democratic candidates, with 14 people campaigning, including five women, two African Americans, a Latino American and a contender vying to be the first openly gay president.
That is even before Joe Biden piles in, which he is expected to do soon.That is even before Joe Biden piles in, which he is expected to do soon.
With more than 10 months to go before the Iowa caucuses, any polling data should be taken with a fistful of salt. That said, the latest surveys put O’Rourke behind the elusive Biden and the resurgent democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, but in the top tier. With more than 10 months to go before the Iowa caucuses, any polling should be taken with a fistful of salt. That said, the latest surveys put O’Rourke behind Biden and the resurgent democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, but in the top tier.
Perhaps the most credible evidence he has a serious shot at the nomination is the fact that Trump appears so jittery about him. As soon as the Texan announced his run, Trump mocked him for his “crazy” hand movements – a rich criticism coming from someone similarly mocked for having small hands. In addition to his emphasis on immigration and the border, and his call for democratic reforms, O’Rourke touched on the need for rapid action to curb climate change.
Last week, Trump told Fox Business Network that he was dreaming of O’Rourke becoming his opponent. Given Trump’s profuse track record of false or misleading claims, that suggests he actually thinks the reverse: that the Texan from dusty El Paso could be his greatest nightmare. “This is our moment,” he said, “with little more than 10 years to spare to free this economy from fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses.”
Beto O'Rourke On healthcare, the issue polls suggest most engages Democratic primary voters, he pointed to a compromise position without using its title, Medicare for America. In contrast to Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All, O’Rourke’s approach would allow families to keep their existing healthcare insurance should they wish to, while expanding Medicare to cover those currently uninsured.
The Observer Despite such tweaking of his presidential offer, it remains true that O’Rourke is most effective when he is most expansive. It is in the contrast between his positive, upbeat call for renewal and the dark warnings that give Trump his populist appeal that his potential success lies.
“Every child, every man, every woman must be able to see a future for themselves in this country,” O’Rourke said, before repeating the phrase in Spanish.
“Otherwise this country will have no future as a democracy.”
US elections 2020US elections 2020
The Observer
Beto O'Rourke
TexasTexas
DemocratsDemocrats
US politicsUS politics
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