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View Full Version : Bernie Sanders’ Supporters Wage War Against Robert ‘Beto’ O’Rourke




Swordsmyth
12-25-2018, 03:05 PM
Suddenly, "Beto" is all the rage.
Sure, Robert "Beto" O'Rourke lost his campaign for Senate in Texas, getting roundly beaten by Sen. Ted Cruz by nearly 3 percentage points. But Democrats seem to love losers (see Clinton, Hillary and Biden, Joe), so of course everyone's talking about Beto running for president.
That's not going over so well with the supporters of another loser, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Socialist who in 2016 went head to head against Clinton for the Democratic nomination — and lost. "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 weigh whether to seek the party's presidential nomination in 2020," NBC News (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/inside-bernie-world-s-war-beto-o-rourke-n951016) reports.


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.

The public war started when David Sirota, a liberal activist and journalist who worked for Sanders many years ago, wrote on Twitter that O'Rourke, a congressman from Texas, "is the #2 recipient of oil/gas industry campaign cash in the entire Congress."

Something I didn’t know: Beto O’Rourke is the #2 recipient of oil/gas industry campaign cash in the entire Congress https://t.co/i5z3zHR03u pic.twitter.com/YYLJpg4uFG (https://t.co/YYLJpg4uFG)
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 2, 2018 (https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1069264575202189313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

The tweet, though, missed the fact that 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," NBC said.
One O'Rourke defender on Twitter wrote: "This is from employees of the oil and gas industry, which is the largest employer in the state of Texas. It includes gas station attendants, for example."
Some saw something more nefarious afoot.
"A supporter of Bernie Sanders attacking a Democrat," tweeted Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and a former aide to both Clinton and former president Barack Obama. "This is seriously dangerous."
"Melissa Byrne, who worked on Sanders' 2016 campaign and supports him in 2020, said she hopes O'Rourke will run against Texas Sen. John Cornyn instead of seeking the presidency," NBC wrote.

"I'm not afraid of Beto," she said. "I'm afraid of people taking a centrist-to-conservative, making that the face of what it means to be a progressive."
Some Democrats say the Sanders troops are doing a disservice to their cause, pointing to the failure of candidates from Our Revolution — the political group formed in the wake of his presidential campaign — to win general elections in 2018, by creating a fight with O'Rourke.
"Telling people that Beto O’Rouke is a moderate candidate is not going to do the damage that it would have before," said one party elder who is not aligned with any of the candidates. "They will strengthen him. They will make him into a bigger force than he is."

O'Rourke recently came in at the top of a straw poll of members of MoveOn.org, first obtained by NBC News. The survey puts the Texas congressman at 15.6%, with former vice president Joe Biden close behind at 14.9%. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) came in third at 13.1%.
"It's another sign of O’Rourke's surprising popularity among national Democrats and a potentially troubling indication for Sanders, whom MoveOn endorsed in the 2016 Democratic primary. That year, 78 percent of MoveOn members voted to back Sanders over Hillary Clinton," NBC reported.
The three men were followed by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who garnered 10% support, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., with 6.4%. Meanwhile, three Democratic senators, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Cory Booker of New Jersey, and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were each selected by about 3% of members.

More at: https://www.dailywire.com/news/39642/bernie-sanders-supporters-wage-war-against-robert-joseph-curl