WHY BETO O’ROURKE FLAMED OUT
After all the hype, fundraising and live streaming, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke dropped out of the 2020 presidential race. It was a stunning fall for a candidate that was once viewed as a potential top three contender for the Democrat nomination. After O’Rourke’s narrow defeat at the hands of Ted Cruz, in 2018, it seemed all but a given that not only would he run for president, but that he would also be a threat to win the nomination. Just one year later, without much fanfare, Beto O’Rourke ended his 2020 presidential campaign.
Beto O’Rourke’s candidacy will likely be remembered for his “Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15” line during the September, 2019, Democrat debate. These comments, made by O’Rourke in the aftermath of the horrific El Paso shooting, were by no means the reason for his entire campaign’s collapse. They were, however, the final death knell to O’Rourke’s already flailing candidacy. By the time O’Rourke had made these comments, his candidacy was already on life support. O’Rourke had already been crushed by the three-pronged attack of Pete Buttigieg, lack of campaign discipline and O’Rourke’s own indecision on whether he would run for president.
Pete Buttigieg, first and foremost was the reason for the failure of O’Rourke’s candidacy. In his 2018 Senate bid, O’Rourke leveraged social media and Ted Cruz’s unpopularity to raise a staggering $79 million dollars for the Texas Senate race. O’Rourke was a social media darling who used his youthful personality to attract legions of online donors. Through social media, especially live streaming, O’Rourke attracted the support of millennials and leveraged that support to become a fundraising juggernaut.
If this campaign strategy sounds familiar it’s because Pete Buttigieg adopted the same exact strategy in his 2020 presidential campaign. Buttigieg and O’Rourke, both provided youth and an exceptional ability to explain their vision for the country. These attributes put the two candidates on a collision course that would leave only one man standing.
Pete Buttigieg not only penetrated O’Rourke’s millennial donor base, but he did it with precision and discipline. Buttigieg provides a more compelling personal story with the dangerous wherewithal on how to actually use this narrative. Buttigieg was relentless in targeting millennials and he won many over with his vision for the country and positions on abortion and LGBTQ rights. Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten Buttigieg, has been an excellent surrogate for Pete and has leveraged platforms like Instagram to connect to hundreds of thousands of millennial Democrats.
It was easy for O’Rourke to raise money in 2018 when his opponent was Ted Cruz. O’Rourke simply did not have to fight other like-minded progressives for donors. With Buttigieg, however, O’Rourke suddenly had competition in his quest to win over millennial progressives. O’Rourke did not have the luxury to coast in this situation. It was necessary for O’Rourke to form a concrete strategy that would protect his donor base from being poached by Buttigieg. For some reason, whether through lack of campaign discipline or complacency, Beto O’Rourke never formed a discernable plan that would insulate his supporters from being picked off by Pete Buttigieg.
If O’Rourke were disciplined, his campaign would have come up with a strategy to protect his donors and launch a counter-attack on Buttigieg. Unfortunately, for O’Rourke, he was anything but disciplined throughout his campaign. Little exemplified this more than after his broad side on guns and AR-15s. After his initial comments, O’Rourke seemed completely unprepared or unwilling to talk about how he would actually implement the policy. No rational person would actually believe that the vast majority of the approximately 100 million U.S. gun owners would simply walk over to their local police station and hand over their guns. O’Rourke, inexplicably, made this very argument and refused to acknowledge that a police confiscation would be necessary.
O’Rourke’s lack of discipline played out over and over again in the campaign. Too often, O’Rourke would make a bold statement without thinking of the implications of his words. At a CNN Town Hall, O’Rourke stated that religious institutions should lose their tax exempt status for opposing gay marriage. After receiving condemnation for his comments from conservatives and liberals alike, O’Rourke attempted to back track but his efforts were met with mockery and just not taken seriously. O’Rourke by the end had become more a gimmick than a serious candidate.
O’Rourke’s campaign was undisciplined and indecisive even before his candidacy officially launched. In the aftermath of his defeat to Ted Cruz, O’Rourke shot down talk that he would be a presidential candidate in 2020. O’Rourke continued to waffle on whether he would run for president before he officially launched his candidacy on March 14, 2019. This date is important as O’Rourke’s launch date took place nearly two months after Pete Buttigieg formed an exploratory committee to run for president.
During that two month gap, Buttigieg took part in an extremely well received CNN Town Hall and garnered praise from pundits, donors and voters alike. Buttigieg became a trendy candidate during those mid-March days and O’Rourke’s campaign roll out was somewhat muted. By the time O’Rourke finally announced his candidacy, it was too late. The political world was focused on Pete Buttigieg and O’Rourke was never able to wrestle away that attention from Buttigieg.
Desperate to win back the media attention that he received in 2018, O’Rourke began to make unforced errors in his campaign. In addition, O’Rourke struggled to stay in contact with many powerful Democrat donors, which hampered his later efforts to maintain his early fundraising. The combination of all these factors led to the decline of the man many believed had a valid shot of winning the 2020 Democrat nomination for president.
Beto O’Rourke rose to prominence via social media, but he also learned the down side of obtaining popularity this way. It is very hard to maintain your presence as a top dog on social media. Once you lose that presence, it is also extremely difficult to get it back. Pete Buttigieg simply overtook Beto O’Rourke as the social media darling of the Democrats due to Buttigieg’s more compelling personal story and the difference in campaign discipline between the two candidates. A candidate can never get complacent in a primary or general election. Complacency leads to lack of discipline and short cuts in campaigns. Unfortunately for Beto O’Rourke, he became complacent and his candidacy never recovered.