HOUSTON — Sometimes, kindness can be cruel. Several 2020 Democratic heaped praise on their rival Beto O’Rourke as the former Texas congressman looked on sheepishly.
“I want to commend Beto for how well he has spoken to the passion and the frustration and the sadness after what happened in his hometown of El Paso,” said former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, a fellow Texan. “He’s done a great job with that.”
Front-runner Joe Biden said: “The way he handled what happened in his hometown is meaningful. To look in the eyes of those people, to see those kids, to understand those parents, you understand the heartache,” Biden said.
California Sen. Kamala Harris said: “Beto, God love you for standing so courageously in the midst of that tragedy,”
Having entered the 2020 Democratic primary race with hopes of becoming the next Barack Obama, O’Rourke, 46, is now stuck on under 2% in the polls and drawing tiny crowds compared to those of his opponents. Clearly, his fellow Democrats had calculated he was no threat. Before the debate, one Democratic strategist described him as “pretty much toast.”
The remarks came during the discussion on gun violence, where Democrats vying for their party’s presidential nomination spoke about an early August shooting in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 dead.
Between jabs among former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on the issue of healthcare, candidates on the stage said that they thought O’Rourke’s response on the topic of gun violence was inspiring.
O’Rourke paused his presidential campaign after the shooting and reentered the race with a focus on gun issues. He offered emotional, sharp criticism of President Trump after the incident and freely threw around the F-word. “The only modern Western democracy that I can think of that said anything close to this is the Third Reich, Nazi Germany,” O’Rourke said in August.
Despite strong fundraising performance just after he announced his White House run following his failed Senate race in 2018, O’Rourke has lagged in polls and failed to recapture the national attention of his challenge towards Sen. Ted Cruz. A RealClearPolitics average of polls has him averaging at 2.8%, falling behind political outsider entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who averages 3%.
The former Texas congressman’s enhanced stage time elicited a skeptical response from commentators online, who suspected that the candidates’ praise indicated that they do not see O’Rourke as a threat.
While New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker praised O’Rourke, he offered some criticism of his flip-flips on gun issues.
“I’m happy that people like Beto O’Rourke are showing such courage now and coming forward and also supporting gun licensing,” Booker said. “I’m sorry that it had to take issues coming to my neighborhood or personally affecting Beto to make us demand change.”
Booker in May proposed a national firearm licensing program, and O’Rourke initially declined to support the proposal. He said that it “may be too far” before backtracking the next day and clarifying that the idea is worth exploring. Now, he supports a national gun licensing system, in addition to a mandatory “buyback” of assault weapons.
