The Emptiest Suit in Texas

I’m not exactly an optimist when it comes to politics. Perhaps it’s because I spent almost 20 years running political media efforts and helming campaigns. But this year . . . well, this year is different.

It’s just not that the Democrats have gone off the deep end ideologically. After their initial reaction to Hillary’s 2016 defeat, that turn was to be expected. It’s not even that the Republicans finally found a general who would fight. We could tell that after seeing what the president did to his primary opponents in debate.

No, the thing that is surprising this year—and I say this even after having foisted many an airhead upon the unsuspecting voters of the Mid-Atlantic—is that the Democrats now offer us a candidacy so utterly and completely devoid of gravitas, or even the slightest sense of adult leadership potential, as to make it incredible that he has a credible chance at the nomination for a major national party.

Yup, we’re talking about Robert Francis O’Rourke.

True, he’s slipped in the polls to a great degree and his campaign appears to be on life support. But that it ever was taken seriously is my point. Like Stacey Abrams in Georgia, how losing statewide candidates could be considered competition to Donald Trump is beyond me. With Abrams, you can chalk it up to Democrats’ fixation on identity politics, giving her a leg up based solely on her race and her sex. However “Beto” O’Rourke, married to an heiress, is about as white as they come and, aside from his general demeanor, a male.