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NBC News: Inside Bernie-world's war on Beto O'Rourke

Deleted member 2426

user requested account closure
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Oct 25, 2017
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Keep it cute!

edit: oops, can a mod add "NBC NEWS:" to the tittle? Thanks!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/inside-bernie-world-s-war-beto-o-rourke-n951016

Forces loyal to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are waging an increasingly public war against Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke, the new darling of Democratic activists, as the two men weighwhether to seek the party's presidential nomination in 2020.

The main line of attack against O'Rourke is that he isn't progressive enough — that he's been too close to Republicans in Congress, too close to corporate donors and not willing enough to use his star power to help fellow Democrats — and it is being pushed almost exclusively by Sanders supporters online and in print.


It's been the first flashpoint in what promises to be a politically bloody primary — one that has drawn responses from foot soldiers in the Obama and Clinton wings of the party — as Democrats begin to focus on who has the best chance to deny President Donald Trump a second term in the Oval Office.
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Nomiki Konst, a progressive activist and 2016 Sanders supporter who is now running for public advocate in New York City, said liberal activists mostly kept quiet about their concerns over O'Rourke's record, including the backing he got from the centrist Blue Dog Democrats, before he lost a Texas Senate race to Republican Ted Cruz in November.

"They sucked it up while he was running" because they wanted him to win, Konst said. "But now it's a different story."

The biggest difference may be that O'Rourke is now a threat to Sanders in the 2020 primary. Though neither man has announced whether he will run, O'Rourke captured the hearts and dollars of veteran Democratic activists, donors of all ages and millennial political newcomers across Texas and the nation in his Senate run.

"I think this week can be understood as a kind of turning point, where — for the first time really — millions of Americans are seeing pieces that look underneath the superficial gloss of projections onto Beto," said Norman Solomon, who was a delegate for Sanders at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
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"Reading Karl Marx is cool," she said. "Doing a livestream while you're doing your laundry is a gimmick."
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Koo

Koo

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Dec 10, 2017
1,863
So we're definitely going to repeat 2016 then. Congrats to the Trump 2020 campaign.
 

Deleted member 4367

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They still think Bernie is going to get rid of their student loan debt so they are overly invested in him.
 
Lidl

Lidl

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Dec 12, 2017
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I thought it was disingenuous of The Guardian to publish that recent article about O'Rourke without a disclaimer about David Sirota's ties to Bernie Sanders.
 
louisacommie

louisacommie

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Oct 25, 2017
17,566
New Jersey
The bernie world of now is smaller then the one of 2016

From my undertsanding a lot of bernies social media game people are on the beto train.

2020 is about winning as many senate seats as possible even more then the presidency
 
Orayn

Orayn

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Oct 25, 2017
10,929
We don't need a primary season where people argue and try to suss out the candidate that best represents their values. Question nothing, eat the slop, all hail centrism!
 
DarthSontin

DarthSontin

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Oct 25, 2017
2,032
Pennsylvania
Conservatives would love nothing more than to destroy all of the rising stars in the Democratic Party. Judging from the Beto topic and the one about AOC misreading an article, it seems many self-proclaimed liberals are happy to go along with it.
 
Kirblar

Kirblar

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Oct 25, 2017
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Some other passages from the artlce that are important- The QP polling actually may deserve its own thread cause that Sanders stat is actually shocking (but not necessarily surprising) and goes against a lot of 2016/post-2016 narratives.

But O'Rourke's ability to connect with younger and progressive white voters — Sanders' source of strength in his losing 2016 primary against Hillary Clinton — puts him in direct competition with the Vermont senator.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Dec. 19 showed that 57 percent of Democrats between the ages of 18 and 34 have a favorable view of Sanders, while his unfavorable ratings are higher than his favorables with Democrats 35 and older.

While the vast majority of Democrats have an opinion about Sanders, that's not true of O'Rourke. Twenty-five percent of millennials view O'Rourke favorably and 15 percent view him unfavorably, with 59 percent telling Quinnipiac they haven't heard enough about him to know how they feel.

That explains the rush to define him in negative terms.
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Also, Sirota's first job in DC was working for AIPAC before working for Sanders. This is not an issue because of their politics, but because their general tradecraft is in disingenous attacks.
It started with David Sirota, a liberal activist and journalist who worked for Sanders many years ago. In a long tweetstorm, Sirota noted that O'Rourke had received more donations from the oil and gas industry than any candidate in the 2018 cycle other than Cruz.

The missing context: O'Rourke didn't take money from corporate political action committees, and the donations attributed to the oil and gas business include both a handful from executives and many others from lower-level employees of his home state's flagship industry. Altogether, they still account for a little more than half of one percent of all of the money he raised for the election.https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1069264575202189313/photo/1
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Explaining this one: This is because Sirota cherry-picked the last two years in which O'Rourke was running for Senate, instead of taking the average of all 3 of his terms.
Earlier this week, Sirota posted an article on the website Capital & Main calling into question O'Rourke's votes against the Democratic position during his tenure in the House. But his variance is less than that of the average member of the party.
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Lidl said:
I thought it was disingenuous of The Guardian to publish that recent article about O'Rourke without a disclaimer about David Sirota's ties to Bernie Sanders.
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Sirota put out a biweekly article attacking Hillary Clinton in the IBT throughout all of 2016. Even after the Sanders primary loss. It's why people are going in on him now seeing him start this shit up again.
 
Soul Skater

Soul Skater

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Oct 25, 2017
10,201
The fact that there isn't someone younger than Bernie whos a carbon copy and is actually progressive enough for this lot says a bunch really. Why have so few people he has propped up in primaries and so on been able to win. In elections the past two years, moderates have been winning.

I actually don't really care who wins the primary outside of it being an outside liberal Trump like insurgency, but the narrative that only someone who is as liberal as Bernie can beat Trump, or flip states like AZ, Alaska, NC, Iowa, ie, the places we need to win the senate, doesn't seem to be backed up by much
 
Stellar

Stellar

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Oct 26, 2017
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I wonder why people aren't so quick to trust this centrist who billionaire donors are trying so very hard to push.
 
daegan

daegan

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Oct 27, 2017
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It's really scary that some of the outstanding choices are gonna be "guy who couldn't win a senate race" and "guy who lost a presidential primary."

We have to find people who can build teams that can win.
 

Deleted member 16025

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Geez, I can always count on this forum to shit all over Bernie. Without him, the progressive movement would not be where it is in this country and democrats would be pulling even farther toward right than they already do.

Political threads concerning the Democratic Party are unbearable here.
 
OP
OP

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Kirblar said:
Some other passages from the artlce that are important- The QP polling actually may deserve its own thread cause that Sanders stat is actually shocking (but not necessarily surprising) and goes against a lot of 2016/post-2016 narratives.


Also, Sirota's first job in DC was working for AIPAC before working for Sanders. This is not an issue because of their politics, but because their general tradecraft is in disingenous attacks.

Explaining this one: This is because Sirota cherry-picked the last two years in which O'Rourke was running for Senate, instead of taking the average of all 3 of his terms.

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Sirota put out a biweekly article attacking Hillary Clinton in the IBT throughout all of 2016. Even after the Sanders primary loss. It's why people are going in on him now seeing him start this shit up again.
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I wonder how they compare with previous Q polls? I mean, Sanders strength has always been Independents but that number in 35+ is quite Clinton-esque.
 
TheRuralJuror

TheRuralJuror

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Oct 25, 2017
6,497
Folks are going to have their chance to put out in their vote for whoever, but I don't see Bernie getting it and his supporters don't help.
 

VectorPrime

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Apr 4, 2018
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It's going to be interesting to see how Bernie handles other candidates not treating him with kids gloves. He's got some skeletons in his closet.
 
ExtremelyBitter

ExtremelyBitter

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Oct 25, 2017
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If Beto does get taken out, this'll all shift to the next candidate people get excited about. Bernie was the enthusiasm option vs Hillary, but without her running other enthusiasm options will steal focus and need to be destroyed to pave his way to nomination. Or something. Beto is currently the nail sticking up the highest in that regard, so he's getting pounded down first.

It's all kind of transparent and exhausting--the election is so far off and this is just gonna keep happening.
 
Game2Death

Game2Death

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Oct 25, 2017
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unoillnino said:
Geez, I can always count on this forum to shit all over Bernie. Without him, the progressive movement would not be where it is in this country and democrats would be pulling even farther toward right than they already do.

Political threads concerning the Democratic Party are unbearable here.
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I agree. The hate for Bernie is unfounded and the weird instant hype for Beto is weird. That's coming from someone who was excited for him in Austin. I don't want Obama/Clinton 2.0 I want FDR 2.0.
 
Soul Skater

Soul Skater

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Oct 25, 2017
10,201
hippopotamus said:
I want another centrist winner in the mold of Gore, Kerry, and Clinton.
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The only people who are going to view Beto from their mold is

Actually probably no one. The general electorate won't see him like that. At all. They'll call him a socialist like they did Obama regardless of whatever his positions actually are. That isn't really what happened to Gore, Kerry, Clinton.
 
Titik

Titik

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Oct 25, 2017
7,490
It was obvious from the start with those bullshit attacks that they were coming from the Bernie camp.
 
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