HOUSTON — Supporters of Beto O’Rourke found solace where they could on Tuesday as the Texas Democrat did his best to find a breakthrough moment in the second presidential debate and resuscitate his flagging 2020 campaign.
Watching from a hip beer garden near downtown, some O’Rourke enthusiasts conceded that the former congressman’s White House bid has not matched the hype of an electric 2018 Senate campaign that raised tens of millions of dollars and came less than 3 percentage points of unseating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, that hasn’t voted Democratic for president since 1976.
But the crowd of a few dozen who braved inclement weather donning black and white, the colors of the O’Rourke campaign, are hopeful that the 46 year-old’s workman-like debate performance might have marked an end to a crisis of confidence of an effort that launched with so much promise that they blame largely on tone-deaf Washington press corps.
“To me it is — he’s been running a typical Beto campaign. Whenever he runs for any race, he starts off by listening to voters,” Katherine Stovring, an O’Rourke volunteer who is over 50, said. “Maybe he didn’t anticipate — I didn’t anticipate it — how unforgiving the D.C. media would be for him doing that.”
“The media narrative, in my opinion, has been off the whole time,” Lee Kulig, 39, an O’Rourke supporter, added, midway through the debate. “I don’t think he’s shining or falling, I just think he’s kind of in the middle, to be honest. I don’t think anyone’s really standing out tonight.”
The post-game conclusions for the second debate of the Democratic primary season, held in Detroit and hosted by CNN, will not be written until the second night wraps late Wednesday evening. The two-night schedule was necessitated by the sheer crowd of the candidate field clamoring for the party’s nomination and a shot at President Trump in the general election.
That a-ha moment O’Rourke could have used to break into the top tier, something akin to what Kamala Harris accomplished in Miami last month, will have to wait for debate No. 3 in Houston next month. The evening was largely, although not entirely, dominated by Elizabeth Warren, a rising front-runner.
“I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for,” the Massachusetts senator said at one point, in what might have been the line of the night. Republicans, generally skeptical of her prospects, are beginning to take notice.
Bruce Haynes, a former Republican consultant, said that if the current trajectory holds, Warren is likely to win the nomination. “She’s the best Democratic candidate. Passionate, [the] toughest. She’s connecting with a clear, populist-oriented message. She is meeting the moment of her party,” he said.
O’Rourke’s problem, some Democrats say, is that he’s waging a presidential campaign as though he’s still running against Cruz, a Republican whose personal approval numbers were under water in a midterm election in which the GOP was on its heels. The Democratic electorate, and a Democratic primary featuring several well-liked contenders, is a completely different type of race.
“Beto is a great candidate and a great guy; the crowded field is making it tough for him to break through,” a Democratic operative in Texas said, requesting anonymity in order to speak candidly.
O’Rourke logged just 10:44 minutes of talk time during a prime time event that lasted nearly three hours, including opening and closing statements, and commercial breaks, putting him sixth in that category, behind, among others, Pete Buttigieg. The former representative from El Paso ranks sixth in the polling averages, garnering just 2.8%.
But the racially diverse crowd that turned out to watch O’Rourke on three flat screens mounted on the wall at Axelrad, an indoor-outdoor beer garden near local universities and downtown Houston, were pleased with his performance, cheering raucously at every opportunity.
O’Rourke’s biggest applause lines with this group — granted, all of his lines were applause lines here — came when he insisted his narrow loss in the 2018 Senate contest means he would put a changing Texas in play as the Democratic presidential nominee, and when he forcefully emphasized his support for taxpayer-funded reparations for African Americans as penance for the legacy of slavery.
“I will also sign into law Shelia Jackson Lee’s reparations bill,” he said, referring to the Texas representative from Houston.
Susan Lynn, 49, the O’Rouke volunteer from suburban Houston who organized the debate watch party, said she voted Republican in every election until 2016, because she could not support Trump. She rejected suggestions that the former congressman’s campaign is on thin ice. In essence, Lynn said, O’Rourke still has the magic.
“I’m a Republican. I voted Republican in every election until the last one, and Beto has moved me to get active and get involved, and I am happy to be here. I think he did great,” she said. “What I love is, when I look across this crowd, I see all ages, all colors. This is America.”
