For all his gloss and engaging rhetoric he simply doesn’t seem to stand for much. While the democratic base is talking with increasing confidence and urgency about single payer healthcare and free college education, when it came down to it O’Rourke didn’t back either bill. He seems positively Clintonite when it comes to Wall Street regulation and has voted consistently pro-police to the point of supporting making police officers a protected class.
Furthermore, a U-turn on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza (as a rookie O’Rourke was one of just a handful of Democrats to vote against funding the “iron dome missile defence system” in 2014) suggests that when he does take a stand on something he lacks the stomach to fight for his convictions.
Such criticism may sound like pedantic purism and I empathise with and understand the urge to get swept up in Beto-mania. By very nature of American politics, the protracted search for a presidential candidate leaves a frustrating power vacuum when the opposition needs leadership to get on the offensive.
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