O’Rourke’s new strategy may fail on trail, but it’s an honorable one
Since announcing his bid for president, Beto O’Rourke has often puzzled his supporters as well as his critics.
The El Paso Democrat did so once again Thursday, in his first campaign speech since the Aug. 3 domestic terror attack that left 22 people dead and dozens injured at a local Walmart, most of them Mexican or Mexican American.
O’Rourke cast the attack on his hometown as an attack on America and argued that President Donald Trump has put the country in peril, in addition to being a menace to millions of people in it.
“We have a racism in America that is as old as America itself and intolerance towards those who do not look like or pray like or love like or speak like the majority in this country,” he said. “We have always tried, until now, to change that.”
Trump has not, unfortunately, and in O’Rourke’s view, he’s been openly relitigating the foundational premises of the American experiment.
“I’m confident that if at this moment we do not wake up to this threat, then we as a country will die in our sleep,” O’Rourke said.
That being the case, he continued, he would continue seeking the presidency but will spend less time in early primary states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. His plan is to focus on “those places where Donald Trump has been terrorizing and terrifying and demeaning our fellow Americans” — states such as Mississippi, for example, where nearly 700 workers at food-processing plants were swept up in immigration raids last week.
And the El Pasoan dismissed the suggestion that he should drop out of the presidential race in order to mount another Senate bid, a course favored by many Democrats eager to retake control of the Senate from Mitch McConnell and the Republicans.
“That would not be good enough for this community,” O’Rourke said.
From a strategic perspective, his stance makes absolutely no sense. O’Rourke came within 3 percentage points of unseating Sen. Ted Cruz last year during a
campaign in which he raised $80 million and gained rock-star status. He is therefore seen as one of the few Democrats with a realistic chance of unseating Sen. John Cornyn in 2020. And his bid for the presidential nomination was languishing even before the El Paso attack caused him to cancel a planned appearance at the Iowa State Fair, which might have boosted his prospects in the all-important Iowa caucus.
And O’Rourke could arguably do more good for his community by running for the Senate.
“The chances of winning the race you’re in now are vanishingly small. And Texas needs you,” the Houston Chronicle editorial board wrote in an Aug. 11 editorial that took the form of a letter to O’Rourke.
Many Texans felt the same way, after seeing O’Rourke respond to the mass shooting with the clarity and passion that fueled his Senate campaign. And for him to switch races would have implications for the entire country, potentially, because the Senate is still controlled by Republicans, who have been deferential, to put it mildly, to Trump.
Still, O’Rourke made the right decision. And it’s only a puzzling one if you assume that it was informed by strategic considerations rather than his concerns about Trump — which are sincere and spurred him to visit 254 counties in Texas during his Senate campaign.
O’Rourke returned to El Paso immediately upon hearing of an active shooter in the Cielo Vista Walmart and told reporters several days later that he was “not even thinking about politics.” His frustration boiled over when, surrounded by news crews, a reporter asked him what Trump might do to help matters.
“Members of the press, what the f---?” he asked.
“It’s these questions that you know the answers to. I mean, connect the dots about what he’s been doing in this country,” he added.
The El Paso massacre has also been personal for Democratic presidential candidate and former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, who released a TV ad telling Trump that “Americans were killed because you stoked the fire of racists.”
Trump insists that he is not a racist and condemned the recent shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, as “a crime against all humanity.” At another point he blamed the media for the “anger and rage” that he says led to the shootings.
But the real estate magnate and reality TV star launched his campaign in 2015 by attacking the “criminals” and “rapists” that he alleged Mexico was sending across the border. And Trump’s loud and repeated warnings about an “invasion” of immigrants were echoed by the El Paso shooter in a white nationalist manifesto.
Trump’s election emboldened white nationalists, at the very least; in the wake of the El Paso attack, it’s impossible to deny that.
But O’Rourke’s point is that Americans who haven’t been harmed or demeaned by this president’s casual bigotry should take it as seriously as those who have. He’s right — and his new campaign strategy illustrates that he does.
O’Rourke is prioritizing the well-being of the people he hopes to represent over his own chances of actually representing them; that may not be a smart approach, per se, but it’s an honorable one.