Beto O’Rourke 2020 campaign megathread

[Xing]

Beto's performance last year was certainly impressive, but I'm not sure now is the time for him to try to run for higher office. I'm not sure that it's a tactically wise move, either, since if his campaign doesn't take off in a big way, he could hurt his potential further down the road. Running against Cornyn would be tough as well, but I'm not sure he'll get the same kind of energy he could in TX-SEN.

[Xing]

Attacks on Democratic candidates are totally unfair and help Trump!!! ... Unless they're attacks on a Democrat (or someone I get to technically say isn't a "real Democrat") that I don't like, in which case, great! Why are they so special? I thought you all wanted scrutiny!

I don't expect people to understand something as elitist as "nuance", but it is possible to scrutinize candidates without believing that they're worse than the devil.

[Xing]

Uh... why exactly does him attending a Metallica concert make you less likely to support him?

Metallica sucks.

Is this a joke?

I can't imagine anyone seriously reconsidering their support for a candidate just because they don't like a band whose concert said candidate attended. it's just bizarre.

Welcome to America!

[Xing]

Interesting, seems he broke the news in a very low-key way, unless he was planning on doing something bigger tomorrow. I think he'll make a decent splash early on, but we'll see how long he can keep it up.

[Xing]

I must be the only person who doesn't feel especially strongly about Beto one way or the other.

[Xing]

Hmmmm....im listening Beto

https://mobile.twitter.com/eschor/status/1106261014914453507

Not bad, only took him a few hours to start playing hardball. Either way, though, it seems like Beto could take more support from Harris than Sanders, should he move to the top of the pack.

[Xing]

Not to be Mr. BOTH SIDEZ DOIT, because I acknowledge that some of Sanders's supporters are being absurd purists, but let's not act like all of the vitriol is coming from one candidate's supporters. This is going to be a very ugly primary, and probably through little to no fault of the candidates themselves.

[Xing]

O'Rourke will need a stronger operation and to clearly define his positions if he doesn't want to end up being a "flavor of the month" candidate.

[Xing]

O'Rourke will need a stronger operation and to clearly define his positions if he doesn't want to end up being a "flavor of the month" candidate.

He's not out yet.

And it's not like his Senate campaign pulled every string to perfection. Remember, he seriously underwhelmed against a no-namer Latina in the primaries before even getting to the General.

I'm not saying he's done for, but let's just say that he hasn't gotten off to the strongest start yet. It's still way too early to call him done for, though.

[Xing]

Am I the only one who sees a bit of irony in people screeching about “muh Berniebros” all the time? This site may have Jfern, but there are definitely more posters here with Bernie derangement syndrome than those who worship him as a god.

Anyway, those are certainly impressive numbers, though I’d definitely like to see how many individual donors there were. Not surprising at all that most of Atlas inscribed his tombstone after one day, though. And now, of course, he’s the presumptive nominee. This place is so predictable.

[Xing]

Platitudes about "coming together" and "working across the aisle" are pretty commonplace, but I hope that O'Rourke is ready to play hardball if he does win the nomination/election. If he goes into the presidency with the naive idea that he can work with Republicans and bring an end to partisan politics, he's going to get eaten alive.

[Xing]

We got the fundraising numbers:

https://twitter.com/ryanobles/status/1108365181439148037

Id say this is a really great start for Beto, not only because of the fact that he outraised Sanders, but he did so with less people. This means that if Beto's campaign, if he emerges as a frontrunner, could scale rather well, and he may become a fundraising machine.

On the otherhand, this kinda plays into the idea that Beto's numbers were just larger and less plentiful, which may signify a weakness in how large his base is(of course, this is day 1, so I doubt this will stick).

Pretty good day to be a Beto supporter, Id say, and a pretty bad day to be a Sanders/Harris supporter. Now we just need Biden for the full picture.

While those are strong numbers to be sure, I think the fact that Sanders beat him in terms of the number of individual donors by almost 100K is still something to consider. Money does matter, but currently (this could change), it seems like there are more actual voters behind Sanders.

[Xing]

Yeah, I don't think any Democratic candidate could possibly get away with not putting tons of resources into Michigan and Wisconsin. Safe to say they'll be top priorities.

[Xing]

https://twitter.com/BetoORourke/status/1109160722192306178

This crowd at USC though!

Seems like an awfully white crowd.  Or is “Count The Minorities” reserved exclusively for the candidate who was arrested for his protests and work during the Civil Rights movement?

All of the #scrutiny is reserved for Sanders.

[Xing]

Unique contributions wasn't unique donors. Of course they dump this on a Friday.

https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1109293384005570560

Your fear is showing

It's quite obvious who the Bernie people fear right now.

Likely because Beto will be Obama 2.0 and compromise on every single thing? He already backed off Medicare for All, and don't give me the stupid pragmatism argument.

I support Medicare for All and so does Beto, but he's realistic as well. We don't have the votes in Congress. The Medicare for America Act would be a massive improvement over what we have now.  That is something that could potentially become law with a Democratic President. It's not a debate over pragmatism. It's a debate over realism. The failure in the ACA was the inability to get a public option through, but that was because traitor Joe Liberman f-cked us over.

If the Republican Party in Congress had even the slightest interest in any form of compromise, I think this would be a good point. The fact is, though, they'll be ready to unilaterally oppose any President with a (D) next to their name and try to prevent them from getting anything done. If Democrats try to cede a bit and move to the center with the current Republican Party, this inevitably happens:

[Xing]

While I don't think crowd sizes can predict results, I do think that the candidate with larger crowd sizes is more likely to outperform their polling numbers, thus why I think Sanders may have a bigger advantage in some states than the polls suggest, and why Beto is probably in a stronger position than he appears to be in the polls.

[Xing]

There's a case to be made for both Sanders and Beto having good numbers. Beto raised a lot of money in a short period of time, which is impressive. Sanders had over half a million individual donors, and it's estimated about 20% are new donors who didn't back him in 2016, which shows that he also had a lot of support, and is reaching some new voters. Honestly, you can be proud of what your preferred candidate pulled off without arguing that what the other candidate did isn't impressive.

[Xing]

Yeah, this seems like Walker v 2.0, except that he jumped into the race sooner than Walker.