Beto O’Rourke was the anointed one for the Democratic Party at one time. Of course, that’s when he was challenging Ted Cruz. At that point, they loved him. When he lost that race, they told him he needed to run for president.
So he did.
How did that go again?
Following the shooting in El Paso, O’Rourke rolled even further left on the issue of guns and famously announced during a debate that he was coming after people’s AR-15s and AK-47s.
Now, Biden has announced just who would spearhead his gun control efforts should he win the presidency.
Joe Biden says Beto O’Rourke will lead his gun control effort if elected president.
O’Rourke has famously said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15 & your AK-47”
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) March 3, 2020
As we have finally reached Super Tuesday, the Democratic Party is trying to close ranks. Bernie has been damn near unstoppable in the primaries so far. While Pete Buttigieg won in Iowa and Joe Biden won South Carolina, those didn’t really stop the Bernie Juggernaut.
For Democrats, that’s a problem. You see, while the right loathes Bernie’s policies, many on the left isn’t too fond of him either. I could write volumes on just why that is, but suffice it to say that many in the Democratic Party aren’t crazy about putting an avowed socialist up as the party’s nomination. Especially when much of middle America isn’t remotely interested in those policies.
As a result, we saw three Democrats drop out of the race on Monday. While Tom Steyer was one of those many forgot was even running, Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar were. They actually had delegates, unlike an Elizabeth Warren.
In short, ranks are closing behind Biden. Beto is basically throwing his support behind the former vice president as well.
However, Biden and his campaign staff might want to reconsider.
O’Rourkes gun control stance–a stance made in the wake of a mass shooting that shook the nation–didn’t win him many converts. It wasn’t long before he was out of the race entirely, despite once being the party’s golden boy.
Still, Democrats are far more likely to support gun control than non-Democrats. Plus, O’Rourke’s shift to focus almost exclusively on gun control undoubtedly played a factor in his eventual fall. After all, while Democrats want gun control, they want a lot of other things more and Beto wasn’t giving them that.
With Biden, O’Rourke can focus on that one issue.
However, it also means that we can assume that Biden’s gun control policies will somewhat mirror O’Rourkes. That’s not really a stretch from his campaign site’s claim that they want to ban the manufacture and sale of so-called assault rifles, either. In fact, the two are pretty much in lockstep on the issue.
Then again, Biden also thinks it’s legal to kill children.
Ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Federal law prevents hunters from hunting migratory game birds with more than three shells in their shotgun. That means our federal law does more to protect ducks than children.
Of course, it’s actually legal to hunt ducks but illegal to shoot humans, which means humans get much, much more protecting than ducks, but this is Biden we’re talking about here.
Yet this is who Democrats are rallying behind.
We have yet to see just how that will work out for them. We don’t know that pushing Beto as his gun control honcho or the withdrawal of his rivals will have any kind of impact on today’s votes or not.
It’ll be interesting to watch, though.
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