OM, HEAVEN HELP THEM!
This batch of New Age Dems livin' on a prayer
ON Tuesday afternoon, hours before President Trump was to deliver the State of the Union, Beto O’Rourke sat in a Midtown theater with Oprah Winfrey. One of five guests for her “SuperSoul Conversations” event — the others included Michael B. Jordan, Melinda Gates, Time’s Up CEO Lisa Borders and Bradley Cooper — Beto was the rock star here, stoking the likelihood of a presidential bid while publicly agonizing over what it might do to his young family.
Most interesting about this nearly hourlong talk was the lack of hard policy, positions or language. In style and substance, Beto was soft. And while it’s a given that anyone participating in this unfortunately named event will have to mimic Oprah’s mumbo-jumbo — running to become the most powerful person on the planet minimized to mere self-actualization, “becoming the highest expression” of oneself — this approach wasn’t site-specific or limited to one candidate.
It’s plaguing the Dems who have announced for 2020.
Cory Booker, fabulist former mayor of Newark and current senator from New Jersey, announced his bid last week on “The View.” When asked his agenda, he said, “I’m running to restore our sense of common purpose.”
Urgent. Relevant. Electrifying.
Booker used valuable airtime not on policy but platitudes. “Rise,” a lazy and cynical variation on Barack Obama’s “Hope,” is his slogan. He is here to offer hugs and vague encouragements such as:
“Impossible things are possible when individuals come together.”
“We are all here because of uncommon coalitions that produced uncommon results.”
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
President Trump would knock him out with a tweet.
In the weeks since casually grabbing a beer during just another Instagram Live post, Elizabeth Warren has been haunted by her false claims of Native American heritage, which she attempted to bury before announcing. Then, for reasons un-
known, Warren revived the controversy last week by apologizing to the Cherokee Nation. On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that Warren listed her race as “American Indian” on her registration form for the State Bar of Texas back in 1986.
“Pocahontas,” it seems, sticks for a reason.
This already-crowded field of Democratic candidates has no breakout star yet, no one whose positions are easily digestible, no one with a slogan as rhythmic and pithy — no matter what else you may think of it — as “Make America Great Again.”
Of those who have name recognition — Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and, to an extent, Julian Castro — who can say what they’re running on, other than identity politics? It’s all so earnest and twee that it makes total sense Marianne Williamson, a shameless huckster who claims to be a “spiritual guru,” has announced her candidacy for president. After all, what she has to say sounds a lot like her fellow candidates.
“My belief is that we need a moral and spiritual awakening in this country,” Williamson said last week, adding that “I’m not running against anyone. I’m running with everyone.”
For his part, O’Rourke told an adoring crowd that following his loss to Ted Cruz, he took a solo road trip to gather his thoughts — after admitting that his children begged him not to run in 2020 because he hasn’t been home for the past seven years. It was remarkable to watch the crowd, and Oprah, swoon as he told the too-perfect story of stopping for a beer in a town called Goodwill, of hashing out whether to run for president with Robert the Immigrant Carpet Cleaner, of learning that “people are so good.”
O’Rourke has no real record of accomplishment, but that doesn’t matter to his fans, who find him so authentic, livestreaming his teeth cleaning and asking his hygienist what she thinks about the border controversy. But if Trump comes through the Mueller investigation intact, he looks hard to beat in 2020. Coastal elites and much of the mainstream media may cringe, but they didn’t hear the same muscular, optimistic SOTU most Americans did: a CNN instant poll found 76 percent approved of it, and a CBS News poll found 72 percent agreed with Trump’s stance on immigration.
And, of course, there’s the booming economy.
But the Dems want to talk about feelings, and right now, O’Rourke may be the most overboard. After sharing that he not only prays, but does so in his children’s rooms after they’re asleep, he said he’d alighted on his greatest motivation for running for president: To bring people together, he said, “to achieve something far greater than any one of us . . . If I can play some role in helping the country to do that — by God, I’m going to do it.”
You can imagine Trump thinking: By golly, please do.