Can Beto do it?

The Guardian ^ | October 7, 2018 | Ed Pilkington

[GuavaCheesePuff]

On a balmy night in Austin, against the backdrop of the glittering high-rises of the city’s booming downtown, Beto O’Rourke is laying out his audacious plan to change the face of Texas, and America.

In front of him, packed into an open-air park, a largely young crowd of 40,000 is thrumming with scarcely contained glee. Even in the liberal bubble of Austin they have never experienced anything like this: a Democrat seriously in the running for a Senate seat, vying to topple Ted Cruz, the Tea Party fanatic whom even fellow Republicans call “Lucifer in the flesh”.

“We are not running against anything or any political party,” O’Rourke tells his supporters. He punches his arm in the air like a pumped-up revolutionary while simultaneously wooing them with a crooner’s charms.

The message is relentlessly positive. The 45-year-old has tweaked Barack Obama’s 2008 catchphrase “Hope and change” for darker times, so now it becomes: “Hope over fear”.

“We are running for each other and this country that I love so much,” he says, to a giant roar.

[amihow]

Many in border states vote as block of sheep.