A solid article from Perry Bacon Jr. on 538.com gives a good run down of some of O’Rourke’s policy positions. Some have derided Beto as not taking any policy positions — and certainly he hasn’t released the full range of position papers that once were the norm in American Presidential campaigns. (Maybe it’s too early for that, anyway.)
But, as Bacon Jr. notes, O’Rourke is far from a cypher:
Those stances from O’Rourke include:
Bacon Jr. also makes an especially useful distinction: comparing Beto with past Democratic candidates, versus a comparison with current candidates:
Presidents, I might classify O’Rourke as fairly liberal on issues around culture and identity and left-leaning but maybe not particularly liberal — compared with, say, Sanders or Elizabeth Warren — on economic issues. (Cory Booker and Kamala Harris probably fall in this camp with O’Rourke.) Part of what’s confusing in assessing O’Rourke’s ideology is that the results are different depending on what benchmark you choose. Is he liberal compared with previous Democratic presidential candidates? Yes. Is he liberal compared with the activists dominating the discourse in the party now? No.
It’s a good article. It’s easy, at this point, to jump into the primary fray in a tribal way. Heck, it seems American political discourse has gone tribal head to foot. God knows the primary thing Republicans love about Trump is that we hate him. (And judges. They like conservative judges. But really, mostly, they like the fact that we hate him.)
But we Democrats are going to be a stronger team if we keep to a reality-based discussion, and not demonize (or idolize) any of our candidates. They all bring strengths to the table; and whoever is chosen, we’re going to need a lot of disappointed followers of other candidates to get that person in office.
Check out the article: fivethirtyeight.com/...