Betomania — the feverish devotion to every syllable out of the mouth of failed Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke — hasn’t quite infected some heavy players in the Democratic Party the way it has the mainstream media:
As Beto O’Rourke Weighs 2020 Run, Democrats Chafe at His Go-It-Alone Style https://t.co/clR4IWIowm
— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) January 19, 2019
According to The New York Times, the chafing dates at least back to last summer, during the campaign that everyone on the Left was pretending O’Rourke had a chance to win. He failed to endorse fellow Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, whom the times refers to as “a history-making congressional candidate — gay, Filipina-American, an Iraq war veteran,” who was working “to turn a majority-Hispanic district blue.”
O’Rourke simply referred to her as a “really special person.”
Awkward.
Not only did O’Rourke not endorse Ortiz Jones, but he also hit the road with her Republican opponent, Will Hurd, for a live-streamed, bipartisan publicity event.
Given the amount of publicity O’Rourke was getting every time he did anything, that had to be seen as a boon to Hurd, who would eventually prevail over Ortiz Jones in what turned out to be the closest House race in Texas last November. The fact that she came that close to unseating an incumbent even without O’Rourke’s endorsement had to have left a bitter taste in the mouths of Texas Democrats who are constantly fighting a somewhat uphill red state battle.
O’Rourke’s lone wolf tendencies have some “important” Democrats pondering whether “he can be fully trusted as an ally.”
Jess Morales Rocketto, a veteran of the Hillary 2016 campaign, refers to it as “Beto-first politics” and wonders if O’Rourke “was concerned about building the future of Democratic politics.”
Remind you of anyone? Barack Obama was great at promoting Barack Obama, but infamously left the Democratic cupboard pretty bare when he exited the White House in 2017. Maybe that’s the vibe that O’Rourke is going for.
While O’Rourke still has fans in the party, the Times article makes it clear just how problematic his lack of endorsement of Ortiz Jones was, and still is.
He also has what is described as a “complicated” past with the party from his time in the House, where he “was known for declining to pay dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.”
He also voted against Nancy Pelosi to lead the Democratic caucus in 2016.
Just to refresh everybody’s memory: In 2019 Nancy Pelosi is the most powerful Democrat in America.
The 2020 Democratic presidential field is already shaping up to be almost as crowded as the GOP’s was in 2016. Unless Crazy Joe the Wonder Veep enters the race, the old party money won’t know where to go. In that case, O’Rourke’s solo endeavors may not hurt him much. Like all Democrats, he will most likely eventually play nice, especially if the speaker of the House is encouraging him to do so.
What will be more interesting to see is how the MSM focuses their attention. Will Beto still be the darling if Kamala Harris jumps into the race? Can he out-bluster Bernie Sanders?
Stay tuned.
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