That’s because, for all the sturm und drang about the evils of white men in America coming from the far left of the Democratic Party, it is not clear at all that this rhetoric reflects the feelings of the majority of the party’s voters. If most Democrats, like all reasonable people, are not going to base their vote on race or sex, then Beto’s unwillingness to self flagellate about his demographic categories may well play to his advantage.
In fact, the demographic that might matter most for Beto is his Generation X bona fides. Other candidates, like Corey Booker, can claim Gen X status, but none so fully fulfill the Gen X attitude and experience like O’Rourke does. The videos of his punk band, like Bill Clinton’s saxophone performance on the “Arsenio Hall Show” decades ago, show a coolness, a Beat disdain for the norms. A fair observer looks at his past and his skateboarding present as effortless and cool.
For the past half-century, the gold standard for a Democratic presidential candidate has been John F Kennedy. Young, attractive, with a burgeoning family and a strong, intelligent, and supportive wife — Beto checks off these boxes with aplomb. He checks off another Kennedy box: he’s relatively conservative or at least moderate in a field that has thus far veered to the far left faster than a greyhound chases a mechanical rabbit
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