The Hill is reporting that our dear Progressive Mayor of Chicago said that Beto has no future in 2020 because he is a "loser" ( lost his Senate race, sarcasm is mine.
"If Beto O'Rourke wants to go and run for president, God bless him, he should put his hat in and make his case," Emanuel said on MSNBC. "But, he lost. You don't usually promote a loser to the top of party."
A morning Consult poll released earlier this moth put Beto THIRD among potential candidates among democrats…. mostly name recognition. I would like to be in his position.
Politico disagrees
O’Rourke has not compared himself to Abraham Lincoln outright, but that hasn’t stopped others from noting some similarities as they muse about his potential presidential run. While O’Rourke lost his bid for the Senate to Republican Ted Cruz in red Texas, his fundraising skills, organizational reach and ability to attract throngs of volunteers (his “Beto-maniacs”) have vaulted him into the national conversation about who the Democrats should nominate in 2020. Seen through this lens, the message of his early morning run was hard-to-miss: If a long-shot former member of Congress from Illinois could reach the presidency in 1860, so too can a suddenly not so long-shot three term Congressman from Texas in 2020.
After his loss in his senatorial race, in DC; after a jog that had Lincoln's memorial in the ath. He wrote a blog
I walked over to the north wall and read Lincoln’s second inaugural address. My body warm, blood flowing through me, moving my legs as I read, the words so present in a way that I can’t describe or explain except that I’m so much more alive in the middle of a run, and so are the words I was reading.
The words, describing the country in the midst of Civil War. The reasons for the war. Slavery. The masterful, humble invocation of God. Acknowledging that both sides invoke his name and saying of the South: “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.” That he could pronounce this judgement and then remind himself and us that we should not judge…
“The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes”
He lays out an accounting for the original sin of our country – acknowledges that this ghastly war is a reckoning, blood paid for blood.
“Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
I don’t know that a better speech has ever been written or given or recorded or made.
These words:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…”
I walked down the steps, too slick to run down.
Is it presumptuous to compare Lincoln's trajectory to Beto's; maybe. Have time and political races changed in more than a century? undoubtedly.
Those who might dismiss the Lincoln-O’Rourke analogy do well to scoff; despite their common traits, the two are vastly different—and 2020 is not 1860. But the comparisons are intriguing nonetheless. Like Lincoln, O’Rourke is charismatic, tall, lanky, filled with energy, an accomplished public speaker and a natural campaigner. Like Lincoln, O’Rourke is a can-do underdog with an ability to command an audience and energize an army of followers. And finally—just like Lincoln—O’Rourke would begin his quest for the presidency (he says he’s not a candidate, but who believes that), following a Senate campaign that he actually lost. “I go back through our history and tick off the candidates for the presidency and I can’t think of anyone who became president after losing a Senate campaign,” Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, the author of the groundbreaking Lincoln At Cooper Union, says. “There’s Lincoln and no one else. If Beto O’Rourke does it he would be the second. I have to say, that would be amazing.”
there are many historic tidbits that may seem trivial but are geeky enough for my history buff to be at least intrigued:
- Lincoln's loss to Douglas made him a household name, same as Bet's loss to Cruz (in what is the closest race in Texas in 40 years)
- Lincoln was a unknown ONE term congressman, but his famous debates (Lincoln-Douglas Style Debates are a things) made him notorious. Beto's townhalls and videos went viral (Bend the knee anyone?)
- Douglas has not loved by the slavery supporting southern Democrats. Cruz, we all know, is not beloved by his GOP brethren. They both should've won without a blink, they didn't.
- Lincoln really wanted to be a senator, had he won he wouldn't have run two years later in 1860. Same with Beto, these windows don't appear in history just by chance and /or often.
Having lost his Senate bid, Lincoln set his sights on the presidency. “Lincoln knew he was a long-shot to win the nomination,” Egerton says, “but I think that in the back of his mind he thought of himself as an attractive vice presidential pick. He knew that the Republicans needed to win those states they’d lost in 1856, when [Republican candidate John C.] Fremont lost to Buchanan. Illinois was the centerpiece, because with Illinois would come Indiana, Missouri and even Pennsylvania. So the map was in Lincoln’s favor.”
The same is true now, for O’Rourke, whose candidacy could build a new blue Democratic wall anchored in the southwest and centered on Texas and its 38 electoral votes. The O’Rourke map would include not only Colorado and New Mexico (which Clinton won in 2016) but also Arizona—which Clinton lost. O’Rourke’s “map” appeals to Democrats, just as Lincoln’s “map” did to Republicans.
Lincoln, as a Republican pivoted to the center. Is that what Beto should do? I don't think so… his policies were not to the center of RED Texas and he had a 2% loss.. Should he finesse his policies for the national mood… of course… but to end this sounds correct to me
But if Beto is channeling Abe, as his post-campaign jog up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial suggests, he might do well to study the Great Emancipator’s nominating strategy. For in 1858, as in 2018 (and as Lincoln knew), it’s one thing to be in the national conversation and another thing to stay in it.