Beto O’Rourke is walking a fine line between making an urgent plea for Joe Biden to visit Texas and trying not to cause controversy that could harm the Democrat presidential candidate’s campaign, Politico reported on Wednesday.
The former Texas congressman has argued that all efforts spent to secure victory in key swing state Pennsylvania appears focused on winning over disaffected white Democrats who abandoned the party in 2016, but O’Rourke questioned if they are the future of the party.
Instead, he pointed out that in Texas there is an enormous and diverse electorate that more closely represents the new Democratic Party and is already turning out in massive numbers.
O’Rourke insists that all that may be needed to put Biden over the top was a campaign visit from the candidate and that a decision not to do so might blow the greatest opportunity of this election.
The former congressman also went public with the plea, writing last month in The Washington Post that “Biden has his foot in the door and needs to kick it open for a quick end to the election.”
The Biden campaign has greeted the request cautiously, although vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris is scheduled to visit Texas on Friday.
Some point out that if Biden spends one of the few remaining days of the campaign in Texas and then narrowly loses the election, he will be accused of having ruined the chance for victory by spending time in a state that Democrats haven’t won since 1976, Politico reported.
But O’Rourke, who came within three percentage points of upsetting GOP Sen. Ted Cruz two years ago, insists the trend is continuing for the state turning blue, which is what polls have indicated all year.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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