First The Good News...

I had dinner Thursday night with JD Scholten to talk about... his next steps. Will he take on Joni Ernest for the U.S. Senate seat next year? Or will he complete what he started last year and oust Steve King from Congress? Something else? When I got home, I scanned the Des Moines Register to see what's going on there. The first thing I ran across was an op-ed by former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley taking himself out of contention for the presidential nomination. "Oh, good," I thought. Another centrist not wasting everyone's time. But I kept reading. He's on Team Beto. He explained why: "In 2016, my long-shot presidential candidacy found its flame extinguished between a rock and an angry place in my own party. America wasn’t in the mood for new leadership. We were in a mood of anger, rage and retribution. And in this mood, Donald Trump’s candidacy rose. It was good for ratings, and good for the Russians; but, bad for America. And, we got what we got." Ummm... He ran against Hillary and Bernie, not Trumpanzee. Maybe it was different in his fantasies.

"But now," he wrote, "there is a different mood in our nation. People are looking for a new leader who can bring us together. They are looking for a unifier and a healer. They are looking for a leader of principle, and they are now looking for a fearless vision." He admits though, that "the anxieties about the future are higher than ever.  Our whole world-- and our country with it-- is experiencing the growing pains of a third Industrial Revolution. And this one will change the future of work as much as the last two. Perhaps, even more so."

The way to best judge how a candidate will be in office is to look at their record. Even when one of my gay friends and almost all of my women friends were absolutely swooning over Beto when he was running against Ted Cruz and Blue America was encouraging contributions to his cause, I would ask them if they could name one accomplishment in Beto's record or even if they knew he had served in Congress for 6 years. No one knew and no one could. Beto was a decent centrist backbencher who had caught the zeitgeist last year because Cruz is such a great foil.

Did it really matter if he would have been a great senator or not? He certainly would have been better than the two Schumer picked and managed to elect-- two of Congress' worst members, Kyrsten Sinema Blue Dog-AZ) and freshmen Jacky Rosen (NV) whose photo could adorn the Roget's Thesaurus page forte antonym of "courageous." Low bar... and, it's true, as far as I can tell, he did seem to grow as a candidate. But in the end, he lost and won't be in Congress. So why not run for president instead? Kevin de León's senate campaign never caught on all that much with the media. Feinstein saw to that. But his record is a billion times better than Beto's. No one is asking him to consider running for president now. He'd make a much better senator than Feinstein-- and a much better president than either Trump or Beto.

By the way all that pink beige (I'm color blond) in the map above was where Kevin won and all that blue in the map below was where Beto won. Beto spent $45,356,406 and Kevin spent $1,725,911.

Back to O'Malley's case for Beto: "In his courageous run for U.S. Senate in Texas, O’Rourke ran a disciplined and principled campaign that also managed to be raw, authentic, and real. He spoke to the American values of honesty, compassion for one another, and courage in the face of a rapidly changing future. These are the American values alive and well in the hearts of our young people. These are the values which tell us where America is headed. And with these values, O’Rourke very nearly defeated the incumbent senator and Republican runner-up for president-- in Texas. The fearless vision and unifying message which brought people together in Texas also sparked imaginations all across our country. And, I believe, will again-- if Beto O’Rourke runs for president."

You might expect a centrist hack nothing like O'Malley to tamp down the very idea of policy and agenda. He doesn't disappoint. It's an issues-free Op-Ed. It's about beating the boogie-man, not about presenting an alternative. Maybe that's why O'Malley-- who presented himself as a basically policy null "unifier"-- never took off in 2016 and only managed to win one congressional endorsement (Eric Swalwell), no states, no delegates, 0.54% of the votes in the Iowa caucuses, 667 votes in New Hampshire (compared to 152,193 for Bernie and 95,355 for Hillary, the other corporate candidate). Before finally withdrawing he was encouraging another corporatist, Joe Biden, to jump into the race and he was insisting Bernie agenda was not "pragmatic"-- one of the words-- like pie-in-the-sky-- that vision-free centrists use to rail against progressivism. His case for himself, in the first debate, was that voters wanted a fresh face. But what is a fresh face? Someone who has never accomplished anything significant previously, so is basically unknown? "We cannot be this dissatisfied with our gridlocked national politics and an economy where 70 percent of us are earning the same or less than we were 12 years ago," he insisted, "and think that a resort to old names is going to move us forward. I respect what Secretary Clinton and her husband have done for our country. But our country needs new leadership to move forward."

In his vote-for-Beto op-ed he wrote the same blather: "The challenges we face will not solve themselves. Building an economy that works for all of us, reversing climate change, passing immigration reform-- they all require leadership. O’Rourke has the wisdom to listen, the courage to lead, and a rock-solid faith in the powerful goodness of our nation. Because he is of a new generation, O’Rourke understands that a new way of governing-- with openness, transparency, and performance-- is called for to tackle our problems in the Information Age. And because he is from a border state, O’Rourke understands the enduring symbol of our country is not the barbed wire fence, it is the Statue of Liberty. So, while I will not be running in 2020, I would like to put my faith and trust in a fearless American future-- an American future large enough for all of our children.  Like so many other Americans, I believe we need new leadership to make that future a reality. And, I believe the new leader who can best bring us together and turn us around to create that better American future, is Beto O’Rourke."

Empty chit chat. Until this week, Beto was still a member of Congress-- one of the minority of Democrats who wasn't a sponsor of Medicare-For-All and one of the Democrats who refused to sign onto the Green New Deal. But good with generalities. And Kennedy-esque looks. Better bet-- one O'Malley and other corporatists would never want to see in office-- is Bernie, someone who stands for actual real things that would transform the country. And if you want to signal your agreement with what Bernie is working towards and contribute to his campaign... that's what the Blue America 2020 presidential thermometer on the right is for. Thursday, Common Dreams published an essay by Jon Queally on the nascent Bernie 2020 campaign. "While there has been no official announcement from Sanders at this point," he wrote, "the grassroots movement born during his 2016 run for the Democratic nomination is already gearing up for what they believe is now a certainty... Karen Bernal, a member of the Bernie Delegate Network and chair of the California Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus, believes at this point there is no other choice nearly as good. 'As the standard-bearer of policies finally considered mainstream by the base of our party,' Bernal said, 'the importance of his presence in the upcoming presidential election cycle cannot be overstated. Without him, the resistance to oligarchy and the war machine suffers. We need Bernie to keep speaking truth to and about power.'"