The Inspiring, Depressing Beto O'Rourke
Like my fellow Democrats, I have gotten pretty damn excited about the Senatorial candidacy of Beto O’ Rourke, the moodily handsome, charismatic Texas Representative who has been firing up the base and winning all manner of national press and buzz for his high-profile race against waking nightmare Ted Cruz, the worst man in the world.
As a presidential candidate, Ted Cruz had one big strength: he hated Donald Trump as much as you and I do. Actually, he probably hated Trump even more than you or I do because, with some notable exceptions, he probably hasn’t publicly called you a liar, insulted your wife’s looks and accused your pappy of killing John F. Kennedy, as he has with Cruz, who nevertheless happily accepted Trump’s endorsement because he’s a spineless piece of shit willing to hurl his wife under the bus for the sake of his political career, and his father too. He’s probably now all, “Master Trump was right to do all of those things, for I am a compulsive liar with a real uggo for a wife and my daddy killed JFK. I’m sorry world. I will do penance by serving Trump as my new God and master. All hail Trump! MAGA!”
You might be saying, “Trump did all those things to me as well” and I would believe you, because he’s that kind of a guy. He’s the kind of guy who probably says horrible things about men’s honesty, women’s looks and fathers’ participation in legendary assassinations on a regular basis. Heck, for all I know, he’s publicly accused my father of trying to kill Gerald Ford. I don’t know what he says at his rallies. I wouldn’t put it past him.
For what it’s worth, my father did not try to kill Gerald Ford, despite what a preponderance of damning evidence might suggest. What I’m saying is that Trump attacked Cruz with a viciousness unusual even for him, yet these days Cruz is on some Renfield shit, hoping that after this whole politics nonsense is over he can be Count Trumpula’s pet slave in his golden New Jersey castle, only vaguely remembering that he once possessed a mind and a will of his own and that, astonishingly, they were strongly opposed to his new master.
Beto O’ Rourke goes to a park and deer, bluebirds and butterflies spontaneously appear, attracted by his luminous presence. Ted Cruz goes to a park and flowers die instaneously and children start weeping controllably for reasons they don’t understand. He’s a ghoul, a nightmare man, an Al Lewis-looking motherfucker, only evil, and not good, like the Progressive who so unforgettably played Grandpa Munster.
And yet, despite being the sort of man who makes children cry and frightens widows and animals, Cruz is nevertheless solidly leading in the polls. For all of his charisma, likability, fawning national and international press and fiery, inspirational rhetoric, O’Rourke trails by so much that unless something very surprising happens in the next couple of weeks he’ll almost assuredly be defeated not just by a Republican but by pretty much the worst Republican, a clammy, mean, almost perversely hate-worthy creep whose mere presence just plain makes people sick.
In that respect, the rise of Beto O’Rourke, and all of the money and attention and press it has attracted is both inspirational and pretty fucking depressing because this Democrat superstar on the rise is probably going to lose to the Republican answer to Count Chocula.
If O’Rourke does lose to the Zodiac Killer then he can always leverage the deafening buzz from his Senatorial run for a Presidential campaign in 2020.
That’s exciting to me because so far the field of possible Democrats jockeying for position to run for president look like the Senior League, with septuagenarians like Biden and Sanders in the mix alongside Elizabeth Warren, who damn near shanked herself in the gut politically with her “Am too a Native American! Look at this bullshit test I took that sort of, kind of, maybe shows something?” ploy, which hurt her in the sense that seemingly everyone on every side of the political spectrum seemed to agree it was a desperate stunt that proved only that Warren allowed herself to get baited and manipulated by presidential politics’ big bully way too easily. Don’t feed the trolls, especially when the troll is Donald Trump.
It seems sadly appropriate that one of the Democrats’ big winners’ possible path to the Presidency would be paved by a depressing, imminent loss to Bye Bye Man.
It’s awesome that O’Rourke has the masses fired up the way a young Obama did but it’d be great if we could start winning elections at some point, not just losing them in an exciting and attention-grabbing way.
I make my living primarily through Patreon, so if you would be kind enough to consider pledging over at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace it’d be
