Funny how just 4 months ago Beto was the darling of the demonic media. Now, he is the demon of the demonic media. What changed?
Beto O’Rourke has become problematic.
O’Rourke was 2018’s progressive golden boy, with record breaking small-dollar fundraising, a viral defense of kneeling NFL players, and the love of Richard Linklater. His merch littered the enclaves of liberal America. From Coachella to Crown Heights, you were more likely to see a Beto tee or yard sign than you were many of the local pols. He wowed Ellen and Oprah and was every Gen X lefty magazine writer’s favorite subject.
The grassroots enthusiasm that resulted from this national fame and an opponent the left found nothing short of vampiric jolted his campaigns well past what most political prognosticators thought possible in Texas. But of course didn’t get him enough votes to actually win. So as the calendar turned to 2019, without a Cruzian foil, the prog-cognoscenti began to turn on their toe-headed boy.
As Jonathan Chait observed, if America was going to get its first socialist president, the Bernie bros were going to have to crush Beto.
The aspirational socialists and the intersectional liberals suddenly found themselves in league against a common enemy: a white male capitalist who once took a road-trip with a . . . Republican. So when Beto formally announced his campaign last week, what he may not have realized is that he was firing the first presidential shot in the left’s internecine Woke Wars. And in this battle he is on the wrong side of some of the very people who were his base in 2018: center-left journalists and power twitter users.
https://thebulwark.com/the-beto-woke-wars/
Beto O’Rourke has become problematic.
O’Rourke was 2018’s progressive golden boy, with record breaking small-dollar fundraising, a viral defense of kneeling NFL players, and the love of Richard Linklater. His merch littered the enclaves of liberal America. From Coachella to Crown Heights, you were more likely to see a Beto tee or yard sign than you were many of the local pols. He wowed Ellen and Oprah and was every Gen X lefty magazine writer’s favorite subject.
The grassroots enthusiasm that resulted from this national fame and an opponent the left found nothing short of vampiric jolted his campaigns well past what most political prognosticators thought possible in Texas. But of course didn’t get him enough votes to actually win. So as the calendar turned to 2019, without a Cruzian foil, the prog-cognoscenti began to turn on their toe-headed boy.
As Jonathan Chait observed, if America was going to get its first socialist president, the Bernie bros were going to have to crush Beto.
The aspirational socialists and the intersectional liberals suddenly found themselves in league against a common enemy: a white male capitalist who once took a road-trip with a . . . Republican. So when Beto formally announced his campaign last week, what he may not have realized is that he was firing the first presidential shot in the left’s internecine Woke Wars. And in this battle he is on the wrong side of some of the very people who were his base in 2018: center-left journalists and power twitter users.
https://thebulwark.com/the-beto-woke-wars/
