A failing campaign makes a man desperate, and Beto O’Rourke surely is a desperate man.
The former Texas congressman was asked this week at roundtable event featuring immigrant and refugee participants to explain how President O’Rourke would fight white supremacy in the United States.
“I know this from my home state, Texas, places that formed the Confederacy, that this country was founded on white supremacy,” the poorly polling 2020 Democratic primary candidate responded.
He added, “And every single institution and structure that we have in this country still reflects the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression, even in our democracy.”
Remember: O’Rourke was addressing immigrants and refugees. Welcome to America, you idiots.
More seriously, though, what trash this is. America is not without its faults, especially in the areas of criminal justice reform, mandatory minimum sentencing, and the militarization of the police. But America is still a big-hearted country that does as well as any in terms of striving to be inclusive, charitable, and free. It is the sort of country where Hispanics, Asians, Jews, white people, and black people all can be legitimate candidates for the nation’s highest office, which, by the way, is the most powerful in the world. It is the sort of country where immigrants and refugees can meet with presidential hopefuls to discuss their concerns, their anxieties, their hopes, and their dreams. It is true that many of our leaders have failed to live up to the principle that all men are created equally, but the bigotry of individuals does not mean America was “founded on white supremacy.”
If there is anything wrong with America, it is the bored, rich white guys — the type who marry billionaire heiresses and manage somehow to evade certain DUI charges — who exasperate the worst of our cultural battles and fear-monger using the worst of America’s problems because they think it will boost them politically.
But when one’s numbers are in the dirt, and when one is a craven opportunist, I suppose that leaves one with no choice but to adopt increasingly insane positions in the hope that it will excite the loudest members of one’s base.
Since announcing his 2020 candidacy, O’Rourke has come out in support of impeaching President Trump (after being against it, after being for it). He has blamed climate change for the border crisis, and that is after he supported tearing down existing border fencing.
Yet, for all of that pandering, the former Texas congressman is still polling at only 2.6%, behind Joe Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. What seems crazy about O’Rourke’s appeals to the fringe is not the apparent futility of his efforts, but that the intended audience cannot even be that large. Who except for the extremely online crowd is going to be energized by a candidate claiming “this country was founded on white supremacy”? Good luck taking that message to the general election.
It must hurt, falling to such pitiable depths after being told by the press in 2018 that he was the next John F. Kennedy. Watching O’Rourke scrounge for relevancy in the 2020 Democratic primary is like watching an aging child star lash out for attention.
Someone should intervene before he hurts himself.
