‘He’s Barack Obama, but White’ – The Manufacturing of Beto O’Rourke

Although I haven’t paid close attention to Beto O’Rourke, he’s been on my radar for a couple of years after noticing certain media outlets had anointed him a “rising Democratic star.” One of my principal rules of political analysis is whenever you hear mass media proclaim an obscure politician a “rising star,” it typically means that individual has been deemed acceptable by the entrenched oligarchy and is being groomed as a promising puppet.

In fact, the first time O’Rourke came into my news orbit it felt like I was being sold a box of cereal by Madison Avenue. After reading an illuminating article by Ziad Jilliani earlier today in Current Affairs, it appears my intuition was correct.

The first paragraph tells you a lot about what the sorts of people who like Beto, like about him.

Beto O’Rourke—a three-term Congressman from El Paso, Texas who recently failed to unseat Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz—is suddenly one of the hottest names in Democratic Party politics. The once-obscure representative is on the lips of many as a presidential contender. “All the guy would have to do is send out an email to his fundraising base…and he raises $30 million,” one anonymous Democratic bundler told Politico. “That has totally changed the landscape for tier 1 guys, because now Bernie and Warren, now they have competition. It completely changes the game if Beto runs. And he should run…He’s Barack Obama, but white.”

Notice how the emphasis on why he’s considered attractive centers around an ability to quickly grab a lot of money and his superficial attributes. Precisely what you’d expect from a Democratic bundler, but it’s still hilarious how these hacks think a “white Obama” is what this country’s hungering for.

From there, I learned several things about Beto. First, he supported Obama on the TPP trade deal, a corporate giveaway even Hillary Clinton had to back away from during her presidential campaign because it was so unpopular. Second,  Clinton dead-enders and Wall Street Democrats appear particularly enthused about his political prospects. For instance:

“He’s game changing,” Robert Wolf, a former top executive at the UBS investment bank and Democratic mega-donor known to raise Wall Street cash for candidates, told Politico…

“We are big Beto fans,” the Clintonite think tank Third Way’s Matt Bennett told NBC during his Senate run. “He’s not with us on every single thing, but his main campaign themes have been very close to what we think a national narrative should be. 

Can you imagine these types ever talking that way about Sanders or Trump? Of course not, which tells you Beto’s just a smooth-talking neoliberal technocrat in training. A guy who will always defer to corporate power and who actually reminds me more of France’s Emmanuel Macron than Barack Obama. Macron was another bizarre elitist creation marketed as a savior from the populist hordes on the French political right and left.

I learned a few other things as well. For starters, Beto’s married to the daughter of a billionaire real estate developer. He also doesn’t have much of a backbone. After getting torched by donors for criticizing Israel, he reversed course and has never dared take such a politically tenuous position again.

O’Rourke, on the other hand, was born into a wealthy Texas political family, attended Columbia University, and has a business background in Internet start-ups. (O’Rourke’s criminal charges in his 20s may also be relevant: The son of a judge and county commissioner, he was not prosecuted for an incident in which allegedlyfled the scene of a drunken crash. There is no evidence that his father actually intervened, but the justice system has a tendency to give wealthy white Ivy Leaguers second chances that others do not get.) He is married to the daughter of billionaire real estate developer William D. Sanders (“the richest man in El Paso”)—whose development plan in downtown El Paso O’Rourke vigorously championed, against the protests of many local residents. During his run for Senate, his disclosures showed that O’Rourke’s assets are somewhere in the range of $3.5 to $16 million, thanks to rental and commercial real estate as well as his wife’s trust fund.

So what’s going on here? From my seat, I think corporate/Wall Street Democrats are becoming increasingly concerned that Bernie Sanders is going to run again (I think he will), and they’re terrified by his continued widespread popularity nationally. I think a narrative is being carefully crafted, and a candidate meticulously manufactured, to create a perception of a young, progressive and charismatic alternative to the populist and cantankerous Sanders. While this sounds comforting, the reality is Beto appears to be your typical neoliberal Macron type of guy, or if you care to be generous, a “white Obama.”

Considering my view that 2020 will be just as populist a political environment as 2016 (if not more so), an empty suit candidate like O’Rourke just won’t cut it. In fact, of all the people being tossed around as potential 2020 candidates on the Democratic side, I think Sanders is by far the one with the best chance to beat Trump.

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15 thoughts on “‘He’s Barack Obama, but White’ – The Manufacturing of Beto O’Rourke”

  1. Thanks for this very bright light on O’Rourke… like a restaurant in the daylight, he’s a tad grubby. He is certainly as smooth as Obama. Now just add Kamala Harris as VP….and you have DNC salivaton. And I think you’re right about Bernie beating Trump…. espcially with the current real investigations of election rigging (been waiting for something serious since 2001).

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  2. They’re all of a piece.

    Sanders supports the Russiagate nothingburger, and fails to challenge Democrats where it really counts – war & politics. He kow tows and praises Pelosi.

    Why does anyone who claims to be even remotely left of center support this obvious gatekeeper?

    Beto’s another Clintonesque joke of a candidate, but Bernie turned out to have no core when push came to shove.

    This is one crisis that voting will not resolve.

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  3. You wrote that “an empty suit candidate like O’Rourke just won’t cut it.”
    I believe that the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proves otherwise. ☹️

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  4. Yeah, Beto’s pretty easy to see through. The Israel incident and his primary against Hernandez are instructive.

    I doubt Bernie’s chances in 2020, when he’ll be pushing 80 years old. Hillary and Trump both seem less than healthy at times and they’re several years younger than ol’ Bern.

    Then again, if someone like Beto or Kamala is the DNC’s response to Trump, Bernie may as well throw his hat in the ring once more for lack of a better option. It almost seems like the red/blue game is a vast social experiment to see how distasteful the political game can possibly be before people rebel. Gotta hand it to my fellow Americans, their tolerance for intellectual bankruptcy is something to behold.

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  5. Hmmm…. one angle Beto’s got is his ability to raise money outside the plutos… if he can continue, etc. This gives him the potential to be independent of the DNC …. if he so chooses. I understand he ran on ‘Medicare for All’… easy campaign promises, I know, but…. (And expecting Bernie, and anyone else, to defy AIPAC, Pelosi, etc. just for shits and giggles, when it may not be necessary in the long game, is to overlook the value of chess over checkers. In fact, demanding that they do, could be a provacateur’s play, to inflict early damage. “We” have to be very, very cunning …. and less childish, I think.

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  6. If Bernie ran as an independent things would get very interesting.

    If he tries to run again as a Democrat he’ll get the same treatment the Republican Party gave Ron Paul.

    Paul would have beaten Obama in 2007, and Sanders would have beaten Trump in 2016.

    Which tells you all you need to know about why both Party’s are self-destructing.

    ..

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  7. Because they don’t have opinions, and haven’t any ideas
    They’re selected, endorsed, and elected. That’s how it has been now for years
    Manicured and well presented, they play out their role on the stage
    Working hard to protect the wellbeing of those few who just pay their wage.

    Smooth and polished and handsome, with the face of a movie star
    They rehearse every word that’s been scripted. That’s what politicians now are.
    Overseeing their wide dominions, they allay the public’s worst fears
    Can’t afford to have any opinions and dare not have any ideas.

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  8. I live in Beto country and yes, there was complete zombification of worship concerning him. It was and is disturbing to speak w/his supporters. No amount of actual information gets through. If the oligarchy wants him, that’s who we’re getting.

    To me the more important issue is stopping the worry about who will win the election. That is decided. The oligarchy will win it. We are wasting precious time and money and energy on this concern. It is the policies that we the people want and do not want that deserve our work, attention and money.

    This is a deep state govt. It has been proven that the govt. simply does not answer to ordinary citizens. It answers to its donors and other powerful denizens. This is what we must confront. “Power concedes nothing w/out a demand.” we need mass, immediate and peaceful revolution.

    We don’t need a pretend savior (and that includes Bernie Sanders who took money from people who skipped meals to support his campaign and got ripped off by the agreement Saint Bernie made w/Clinton to take their money by deception.) It is quite interesting to read the details about this deal and the DNC fraud lawsuit at Jared Beck’s twitter feed. The idea that Bernie is some kind of different politician simply does not hold up to reality. In fact, he and Beto share many traits in common and I find Bernie’s supporter’s unwillingness to look straight into the reality of Bernie’s actual record just as difficult to deal with as Beto supporters.

    That said, even if you found a real person who actually genuinely cared about the lives of ordinary people, that one person cannot face down the deep state by herself. Mass action is required and nothing less has any chance. This is one evil group of very powerful people. They think nothing of killing or harming those who step in the way of their plan for complete control of everything. We must be courageous, dedicated to non-violence, and dedicated to each other. Instead of massing 30,000 people to rally for a fake political figure, we can mass 30,000 people to help one person after another confront the injustice of the powerful. If we took one person’s suffering at a time, massed and addressed it, we might get somewhere.

    You can always vote but what is actually required of us is courage and the willingness to band together for each other’s welfare and the welfare of this planet.

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  9. I agree fully with your analysis, Jill. The establishment will never allow a real people’s candidate anywhere near the levers of power, and by that I mean those that control the how the money flows through the system and into their pockets. The assassination of Bobby Kennedy comes to mind as an example of their resolve in protecting the status quo.

    Any candidate put forward by the media should be immediately suspicious, no matter what comes out of their mouth – the more smooth and rehearsed it sounds, the more it should repel us. And if this person has their own Madison Avenue designed logo in conjunction with a vapid, meaningless slogan we should run like hell in the opposite direction.

    Bernie had his chance and blew it. He should have publicly confronted Hillary and the DNC when it became obvious that he was being cheated. But no, he chose to play ball like a true beltway insider.

    Any yes, there is nothing except a massive public uprising that will have any effect on our trajectory. As Frederick Douglass once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” To get there will require more suffering, just as the deeply sleeping need to be vigorously shaken to regain consciousness.

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  10. Hmm…. Bernie lived the assassination history… maybe he didn’t want to die. We need a ‘yellow jacket’ moment, and being the opposite of French, it will take real, widespread suffering to trigger it here…. before the disaster becomes so intimidating that we cower instead of standing. Hopefully, secession will be a viable (albeit not ‘constitutional’) option.

    Maybe that’s why some ‘conservative’ voices support Universal-Basic Income and -Health Care… a way to for the oligarchs to continue ripping and raping, while keeping us ‘contented’. Sort of the way FDR saved capitalism.

    Reply

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