I've got to be honest, not many of us in the press were looking forward to the 2020 Democratic primary. Just hours ago, it felt like it was going to be an exhausting, miserable affair. The current field was a mixture of fossils, extremists and power-hungry cynics willing to say anything and hurt anybody to get a hold on the White House. But things have changed. A new candidate has entered the race, a man untethered from the old ways, possibly even from the conventional restrictions of physics, time and space. More a spiritual force than a temporal leader. More a poet than a politician. Ladies and gentlemen, the author of our redemption, Beto O'Rourke. Beto loves rock and roll, says "GMA." He is not like everyone else. He doesn't do stuffy speeches or policy programs. He is not going to bore you with entitlement projections, or some scary stuff about the Korean peninsula. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM TUCKER CARLSON. Beto has a skateboard and wears Nirvana T-shirts. His vision for this country is 1995. That was the year he was living way uptown in a walk-up and working as a "manny" and he knew this dude on West 112th Street with some of the stickiest bud in Manhattan -- Indica - a little heavy, but sweet. It was a good time. Beto wants to bring us back to that time, and the press is totally on board. According to the press, Beto has got that "magic dust," oh, yes. And he does at least an eight-ball. Though the guy on 112th Street has more, if you need it. Beto has great hair, too. Beat that combo. Actual voting doesn't begin for months but Beto is already America's spiritual president. And by the way, that's a much cleaner way to run for office. However, real elections -- the ones with voters -- sometimes end with an announcement like this: "We can call now that the Texas race will go to Ted Cruz, the incumbent Republican. ... Ted Cruz win over Beto O'Rourke." CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE ENTIRE EPISODE. Well, that Senate election loss was a bummer for Beto. So Beto splits soon afterward on a solo road trip. It was a whole 'Me and You and a Dog Named Boo' kind of thing. The sort of trip that Kerouac or Steinbeck would have taken. Just the hum of the engine and the black ribbon of the open road -- a time to feed the soul. It was also a time to stage a series of publicity shots for Snapchat and Instagram while simultaneously blogging the whole thing -- timeless stuff. An all-American redemption story. Beto came back a better man. He understood the running for president thing was not for him. When a reporter repeatedly asked Beto whether he'd ever run for president, he said, "No punto ...No period." No punto, baby! Down at the border, where the people are authentic and speak various languages at once. That means, 'Yes, I am running for president just as soon as I can hire a staff of consultants and line up some billionaires to fund it. But for now, I will lie about my plans.' CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP. And that's exactly what Beto did. So here we are in the Age of Beto. What's the plan, man? What are we doing? What's next? What's next, Beto says, is understanding that the things that we think of as terrifying threats to the country are actually perfectly cool. Like more than 20 million people using fake identities to live illegally inside the United States. That's not a problem. That's the best, man. What else is Beto for? That's a fair question, but honestly it's not really clear. We checked his campaign website. There is a picture there that says "Beto for America," in English. The one in Spanish says, "Beto for all." We couldn't find any actual policies even about fighting extinction. "All of us, wherever you live, can acknowledge that if immigration is a problem it's the best possible problem for this country to have," Beto says. Yes, it's the best problem. Hard to think of a better problem. Illegal immigration is such a cool problem to have, we ought to have more. Let's knock down the border walls, dude. But that's not to say Beto doesn't see problems on the horizon. He does, and when he does, his doe-brown eyes cloud a little, and he stares off in the distance to consider a holistic solution, just like James Dean would have done if he would have lived to be Beto's age and could skateboard. Beto says global warming is a major bummer. Global warming could make us go extinct, like the dinosaurs in the museums, man. Dead forever. "Some will criticize the Green New Deal for being too bold or being unmanageable," he says. "I will tell you what, I haven't seen anything better that addresses the singular crisis that we face, a crisis that could, at its worst, lead to extinction." Extinction. That's what Beto is fighting against. What else is he for? That's a fair question, but honestly, it's not really clear. We checked his campaign website. There is a picture there that says "Beto for America," in English. The one in Spanish says, "Beto for all." We couldn't find any actual policies even about fighting extinction. But we did find a sweet Beto tote bag that costs 30 bucks. And you don't have to pledge to NPR to get it, although you probably already have. You ought to get one. It's awesome. Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from 'Tucker Carlson Tonight" on March 14, 2019.<doc-sep>In what may be the biggest non-surprise of the 2020 presidential campaign, Beto O’Rourke announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, Trevor Noah said Thursday. “Yes, that’s right, Beto O’Rourke is officially in the race,” said “The Daily Show” host. “And it’s about time because he’d been teasing us for months. Yeah, he wouldn’t say he was running. But he was on Oprah. He was on the cover of Vanity Fair. He released a documentary. But whenever we asked him if he was running he’d answer like a coy Southern belle: ‘I might, but a lady never tells.’” “Obviously, we all saw this coming,” Noah added. “This is the least surprising thing to happen since we found out Tucker Carlson said something racist.” Check out the video above to see why Noah thinks O’Rourke’s loss in the 2018 Senate race gives him an advantage.<doc-sep>Listen to Slate’s The Gist: Get More of The Gist Slate Plus members get extended, ad-free versions of our podcasts—and much more. Sign up today. Join Slate Plus Subscribe to The Gist Copy this link and add it in your podcast app. copy link copied! For detailed instructions, see our Slate Plus podcasts page. Get The Gist in Your Inbox We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Please enable javascript to use form. Email address: Send me updates about Slate special offers. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Sign Up Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. Listen to The Gist via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. On The Gist, Beto O’Rourke, the countertop candidate. In the interview, historian Rutger Bregman got in a spat with Fox host Tucker Carlson, but you wouldn’t know it if it weren’t for his own video of the incident. Fox never aired it, as Bregman accused Carlson of carrying water for billionaires and Carlson responded with profane insults. Bregman joins the Gist to give us the backstory on that, but not before laying out some of the progressive economic policies—with basis in American history—that he favors, Carlson’s disapproval notwithstanding. Bregman is the author of Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World and writes for the Correspondent. In the Spiel, New Zealand’s unity on gun control is admirable. In the big, diverse country that is the United States, things are a little more complicated. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Join the discussion of this episode on Facebook. Email: thegist@slate.com Twitter: @slategist Podcast production by Pierre Bienaimé and Daniel Schroeder.<doc-sep>
Conservative pundit and author Mark Steyn called former Texas Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke “a parody of rich white privilege” in a party obsessed with diversity and identity politics. Steyn began his segment on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Friday appraising a ribald poem written in 1988 by the latest Democratic presidential candidate, in which he describes sexual fantasies with a cow. “We’re in Keats and Shelly territory here,” Steyn joked in reference to the two poets. “I love the rhyme, I love the meter, I love the poetic sentiment.” (RELATED: Beto O’Rourke: ‘Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt,’ Trump Tried To Collude With Russia) The writer summed up the Democratic presidential race as “diversity and identity means we have to put up many black and gay and Muslim and transgendered candidates, so they can lose to the rich white guy.” While the Democratic Party lauds itself on embracing diversity, Steyn noted, “I don’t believe in the concept of white privilege but these guys do and it’s hard to get any more white privileged than a judge’s boarding-school son, who’s writing bovine poetry.” He added that O’Rourke has styled himself as the “world’s most dedicated, middle-aged skateboarder.” (RELATED: Texas Democratic Party Chairman Unable To Name One Beto Accomplishment) Since O’Rourke entered the presidential race this week, he has been the focus of non-stop media attention. The congressman made climate change a key component of his political program and said those fighting the ecological battle are like the troops that stormed Normandy during the D-Day invasion of 1944. Commenting on contemporary politics, Steyn added, “Beto is the boy band du jour.” Follow David on Twitter