2066 The Blurry Messiah

2066 The Blurry Messiah

STATE COLLEGE, PA (Wessays ® Wire)  -- Run for your lives, it’s BETO! Beto O’Rourke, who says he was “born to be president” skateboarded into a student center at a local college and waved his arms.

The candidate is best known for losing an election for Senate to Ted Cruz, whom nobody likes.  He also is known for being a pretty good computer hacker, a mediocre skateboarder, the waving arms and -- best of all -- no stand on any issue, at least no stand about which you can pin him down. Blurry.

We’ll talk about that later.  But now, it’s on to the important stuff:

--Democrats don’t have second names anymore.  There’s Bernie. There’s Uncle Joe.  There’s Tulsi.  And even among the handful of non-candidates, some have only a first name or initials. AOC (too young to run,) Oprah (doesn’t want the pay cut,) for example.

Now we can return to Beto at Penn-State-o.

In order to run a viable campaign against a republican in Texas, you have to be an almost-republican yourself.  Beto met that criterion pretty well by spitting platitude out of one side of his mouth while sipping Big Oil money out of the other.

Is there a chance that a white male can win a Democratic presidential nomination in 2020?  Slim chance, but still possible.  Does he have to stand for or against something meaningful? Well, sure.  Playing Dudley Doright won’t work for anyone.  But the candidate can’t be a dry and unlikeable deadmouth like -- oh, say -- Hillary Clinton.

Give him that.

President Obama rode to victory on a combination of charisma and policy in 2008.  The bloom was off the rose in 2012, but the petals hadn’t all fallen to the ground yet, and he had an opponent so stiff and out of touch he might have won re-election by napping.

The present president has been running for a second term since before he won the first one. And trump is running on hot air, lies, and his evil carnival barker persona.

Beto?  Though lower key, he has the substance-free thing pretty neatly sewn up, at least for now.  Uncle Joe waffles a la Mario Cuomo, Andy Cuomo waffles like Mario and the others churn out unreadable position papers or speak actual policies in less Hillary-like manner but can’t skateboard. (Tulsi has been pictured riding a surfboard, but Surfin’ USA is pretty yesterday.)

In his campaign against Cruz, Beto visited every county in Texas.  All 254 of them. It didn’t work. Cruz was disliked but still elected.  O’Rourke may try visiting every county in the US -- and there are more than 3,000 of them.  Guy’s going to have mighty sore feet.

What does early campaigning in a small town with a big university say about a candidate?  It says he’s counting on the kid vote. But at least his handlers (he does have handlers. They all do, even the ones who say they don’t,) plunked him down in a large-ish food court rather than the vast stadium, the near-vast meeting hall or an outdoor venue on campus.  Like trump, you can make a small gathering look like a big crowd if you photograph it from the proper angle.

But the blurry messiah needs sharper focus.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Comments? Send ‘em here: wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019