When you are polling at nearly 0% in a national primary, I guess you have nothing to lose.
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke has taken his 2020 Democratic candidacy in an odd direction. He has embraced two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s strategy of attacking Donald Trump’s supporters personally.
The moment came during an interview this weekend with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“You said to me last week that you thought President Trump was a white nationalist,” the cable host began. “I just wonder, sir. President Trump won your home state of Texas by nine points. Almost 63 million Americans voted for him. Do you think it is racist to vote for President Trump in 2020?”
“I think it is really hard, after everything that we have seen, from his time as a candidate in 2016, to his repeated warnings of invasions, to his repeated calls to send them back, sending back people who are U.S. citizens, sending back people who were born in this country,” O’Rourke replied, “his description of white nationalists and Klansmen and neo-Nazis as very fine people, his warnings of Muslims as being somehow inherently defective or dangerous and attempting to ban them from entry into this country, his transgender troop ban, and his attack on anyone who does not look like or pray like or love like the majority of the country.”
The former congressman added, “Yes, Donald Trump is dangerous to the future of America, and will destroy what makes us so unique and so special and the genius that we represent to ourselves and to the rest of the world.”
This is a crazy strategy for a would-be presidential nominee to adopt. This sort of anti-Trump, anti-MAGA red meat may excite the Democratic base, but good luck with that message come the general election.
.@jaketapper: “Do you think it’s racist to vote for President Trump in 2020?”
Beto O’Rourke: “I think it’s really hard… Donald Trump is dangerous to the future of America and will destroy what makes us so unique and so special” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/FL38cls3B8
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) August 11, 2019
Question: How does a nominee for president walk back a direct attack on his opponent’s supporters? Answer: He does not. He has to live with it. We saw this in 2016 when Clinton went after Trump voters with her mild-in-comparison “deplorables” quip. That remark hurt her badly with voters, unleashing “all hell,” according to a 2016 Clinton campaign pollster.
Also, bear in mind that for all the damage the “deplorables” moment did to Clinton’s 2016 candidacy, she only suggested the worst of a portion of Trump’s supporters. O’Rourke is out here suggesting on national television that any support for President Trump is racist by definition.
Again, his message may give his fledgling primary campaign a boost, whipping the Democratic base into a supportive frenzy. But it’s difficult to see how this helps him in the general election, should he somehow become the Democratic nominee.
Why would a guy with presidential ambitions suggest publicly that his opponent’s supporter are racists?
Hot Air’s Allahpundit has as a decent theory: The former congressman knows his 2020 Democratic campaign is toast — he is polling at only 2%, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average — and he is trying to position himself as a liberal purist for some future political run.
That is as good a theory as any I can think of. Then again, we may be overthinking this. It could be simpler than all of that. It could be that O’Rourke is not that bright and that he has not considered the long-term political consequences of suggesting that all support for Trump is racist.
