With everything going on today with the impeachment inquiry and the airing of the whistleblower complaint, it seems like a good moment to ask, “How courageous are we when it comes to politics.”
Yesterday Beto O’Rourke visited Kent State — site of a mass shooting that shook the nation in 1970 — and was met by a huge crowd. But among those there were also open carry marchers who tried to interrupt his speech with taunts. Beto would have none of it. At the 10 minute 41 second mark in this video, he says,
Nobody should show up with one of these weapons to seek to intimidate us in our own democracy. That’s wrong. That’s wrong.
Since Beto said loudly and clearly in the third debate, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” gun rights advocates have been showing up at his town halls packing fire. First there was the woman with her Glock at his rally in Aurora, CO:
Then there was the rag-tag group of 2nd Amendment fanatics standing outside a town hall in Gary, Indiana:
The next day a gun rights activist showed up at a rally at Ohio State:
Though most of the crowd cheered enthusiastically, not everyone was happy. One man was escorted from the rally after shouting gun-related questions at the candidate.
Another, who described himself as a “homosexual” U.S. Navy veteran, asked O’Rourke why he should have to give up his gun when he needs it to protect himself from violent bigots.
O’Rourke asked why he needed a weapon designed for the military to protect himself.
Finally there was the arrest this week of a soldier who wanted to bomb a major news network and expressed a desire to target Beto O’Rourke on social media:
Make no mistake. The gun rights activists are not there because they fear losing their Second Amendment rights. This may be the reason they give for turning up at Beto’s rallies, but it’s not their real motivation. Call it a smokescreen. They are there because they fear losing an America in which they rule the roost.
Beto’s embrace of immigration, his acknowledgment of America’s racist past and present, and his celebration of the bilingualism that has come to define the nation, among many other social issues, unnerve them – so much so that they’ve coined nicknames for him like “Beta” to imply he’s effeminate or “Robert Francis” to imply he denies his Anglo heritage. (The fact that Robert Francis is generally an Irish name, not an Anglo one, seems to be lost on them.)
One protester at Kent State yesterday ended up letting the cat out of the bag when he turned up with this sign pictured on the right here for the event:
Note his first three complaints have nothing to do with guns at all. Beto’s a racist – because he has the audacity to acknowledge America’s racism. He’s traitor – because he doesn’t want to block immigration to a country of immigrants. And he’s intolerant – because he wouldn’t tolerate an avowed racist, Breitbart “journalist” at a private event for students at an HBCU in South Carolina. Guns only come up at the end in the somewhat incoherent claim that Beto doesn’t want to incarcerate people, just weapons. (Logic, my friends, logic! You cannot incarcerate a gun.)
The typical response on the Democratic side to this belligerence has been to set our sights lower so as not to alienate anyone. We saw this strategy at work when Chuck Schumer and others suggested that talking about a mandatory AR buyback was hindering progress on a background checks bill. But McConnell himself showed what a canard this line was when he and Trump suddenly switched gears this week and blamed the impeachment inquiry for ending work on a gun bill. Beto had the last laugh on this one:
What if, in lieu of compromising with ourselves, we decided to go with the courage of our convictions? What if we unabashedly committed to tackling injustice in America and to making fundamental changes? Would that really lose us more supporters than we already did during the Reagan Revolution when we let labels stick like “welfare queens” and “corrupt union bosses” with nary a protest?
I don’t buy the line that Beto’s campaign has gone through several reboots but in the past week his campaign has changed its tone to match the moment. What this moment requires is courage – courage, for instance, that the pursuit of transparency through an impeachment inquiry won’t tear us apart but will instead lead to a national reckoning, which is the first step toward a new union.
Courage to talk about racism. Courage to talk about gun violence. Courage to talk about climate change. Courage to talk about the jobs of the future. Courage to talk about how we benefit from immigration.
When we’re resolute, we build a path to each other and to the future. In Beto’s words, “We the people decide what’s possible in this country.”
UPDATE: In honor of Acting DNI Maguire’s testimony today, it seems worth recalling Beto’s history on impeachment. He called for it already in 2017 based on Trump’s invitation to Russia to interfere in the 2016 US election and his subsequent obstruction of the investigation.
Please check out Beto’s vision and plans at BetoORourke.com and donate to his campaign, which is powered by people, not PACs or special interests or corporations.
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Beto is turning 47 on 9/26, so we’re now trying to reach 47 donations to his campaign!