Texas Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke poses for a photo in Falfurrias, Texas, on January 7, 2018. (AP Photo / Eric Gay)
“I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights anytime, anywhere, any place,” said Texas US Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, when he was asked how he felt about protests by National Football League players.
That may not sound like a typical US Senate candidate in Texas—Democrat or Republican. But, of course, Beto O’Rourke is not typical.
And that could make all the difference—in Texas this fall, and in the broader national contest for control of the US Senate. O’Rourke is mounting a boundary-breaking challenge to Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. And it seems to be working.
The Democratic congressman from El Paso’s blunt talk, savvy use of social media, and energetic campaigning have kept him competitive with Cruz. Polls have the challenger at 45 percent to Cruz’s 49 percent, with 6 percent undecided. That’s a seriously competitive race, and Texas Democrats are now talking about the prospect that O’Rourke could be the first Democratic senator from Texas in a quarter-century.
This turn of events has got Cruz and his backers sputtering more nonsense than usual. The meanest man in the Senate has been attacking O’Rourke for months—trying to get the Democrat to back off and back down.
But O’Rourke refuses to play politics as usual. He seeks to mobilize new voters, so he is talking in new ways: saying he would vote for the impeachment of Donald Trump and breaking with Trump on the NFL issue.
Asked at a Houston town-hall event about whether he thought the NFL protests were disrespectful, O’Rourke said, “My short answer is no, I don’t think it’s disrespectful.”
The Democrat did not stop there.
“Here’s my longer answer,” he added. “I’m gonna try to make sure that I get this right because I think it’s a really important question. And reasonable people can disagree on this issue, let’s begin there.”
Recalling Taylor Branch’s book Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, O’Rourke spoke of “what Dr. King and this nonviolent, peaceful movement to secure better—because they didn’t get full—civil rights for their fellow Americans, the challenges that they faced: those who died in Philadelphia, Mississippi, for the crime of trying to be a man, trying to be a woman, in this country; the young girls who died in the church bombing; those who were beaten within an inch of their life crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, with John Lewis; those who were punched in the face, spat upon, dragged out by their collar at the Woolworth lunch counter for sitting with white people at that same lunch counter…”
O’Rourke explained that freedom was secured by “those in uniform” and by “those who took their lives into their hands riding those Greyhound buses, the Freedom Riders in the Deep South in the 1960s who knew full well that they would be arrested…Rosa Parks getting from the back of the bus to the front of the bus.”
With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.
As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.
We can play this critical role because of support from readers like you. This June, we’re raising $20,000 to power The Nation’s independent journalism in the run-up to November’s immensely consequential elections.
It’s in our power to build a more just society, and your support at this critical moment brings us closer to that bold vision. I hope you’ll donate today.
Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
The Texas Democrat concluded that
Peaceful, nonviolent protests, including taking a knee at a football game to point out that Black men, unarmed; Black teenagers, unarmed; and Black children, unarmed, are being killed at a frightening level right now, including by members of law enforcement, without accountability and without justice.
And this problem—as grave as it is—is not gonna fix itself, and they’re frustrated, frankly, with people like me and those in positions of public trust and power who have been unable to resolve this or bring justice for what has been done and to stop it from continuing to happen in this country. And so nonviolently, peacefully, while the eyes of this country are watching these games, they take a knee to bring our attention and our focus to this problem and ensure that we fix it.
Beto O’Rourke is right—about the value and necessity of dissent, and about how to run for the US Senate in 2018.
John NicholsTwitterJohn Nichols is the executive editor of The Nation. He previously served as the magazine’s national affairs correspondent and Washington correspondent. Nichols has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.