David Sirota for the Guardian writes:
www.theguardian.com/...
Betomania has befallen Washington elites: Democratic pundits, political operatives and influencers are having a collective swoon over Democratic representative Beto O’Rourke. He is fresh off a failed Senate run, where he generated internet fame for his skateboarding, musicianship and sunny disposition. Now, he is Washington’s version of Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan, only the screaming teeny-boppers are Beltway politicos: one rainmaker touted him as “Obama, but white”, a Wall Street-funded group called Third Way declared that “we are big Beto fans” and a former Obama aide penned an entire love letter touting O’Rourke 2020, without even once mentioning where the Texas congressman stands on a single legislative issue.
A liberal heartthrob who votes with Republicans
The 46-year-old O’Rourke has racked up a voting record helping Republicans ram parts of their agenda through the Congress. In an era of growing economic inequality, O’Rourke has split with the majority of his party to vote for Republican initiatives to weaken Wall Street regulations and accelerate bank mergers – and he once voted for a Republican bill that Democratic legislators said was designed to block the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s from combating racially discriminatory lending. He also voted for a key part of Donald Trump’s so-called deportation force.
Why another Obama would be a tragedy
Replicating an Obama presidency would be better than what we have now. But it would still be a tragedy. That’s because the fundamental premise of Obamaism - and its predecessor, Clintonism – is that there is always a policy that can at once serve the people and the powerful. And recent history has showed that is both false and dangerous.
The fantastical mythology of a satisfactory “third way” between the corporate class and the rest of us posits that the Democratic party’s insurance industry backers can be enriched and healthcare policy can still be humane; its Wall Street sponsors can eviscerate industries and workers can still earn enough to survive; and its fossil fuel donors can keep pumping out carbon and the ecosystem can still sustain human life.
The alluring idea is that we never actually have to answer that haunting question of labor lore: “Which side are you on?” Obamaism leads us to believe that we do not need to choose, and that we can actually have it all – as long as we always make sure to line up behind policies that appease the super-wealthy.
It is, in other words, the ideology undergirding the argument recently put forward by former vice-president, Joe Biden, who insisted: “I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble … the folks at the top aren’t bad guys.”
This is the political sentiment that the activist/progressive portion of the democratic party will take over the course of Beto’s candidacy. This is perhaps one of the best pieces that accurately sums up progressive disappointment with the Obama presidency while explaining why picking Beto would be a mistake and lead to the same outcomes that Obama achieved (further expansion of income inequality, MIC, and fossil fuel capitulation)
Worth reading the whole thing for a better informed decision. It is an inconvenience for some people to bring up these opinions. I believe it is patriotic and sadly a part of our national dialog that has to be articulated from a British paper — since U.S print news is subject to regulatory capture.