THE FEDERALIST
Late last night, failed Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke confirmed to El Paso’s KTSM that he’s seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. This morning, he added a video to the mix, and Twitter exploded with furry jokes and fanfare (the way politics should be?). This is all on the coattails of an obnoxiously fawning Vanity Fair profile that basically portrayed O’Rourke as the dream Gen Xer, heaping praise on his “floor-to-ceiling bookshelf [that] contains a section for rock memoirs (Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, a favorite) and a stack of LPs (the Clash, Nina Simone)” before showing off his intellectual side: a “sizable collection of presidential biographies, including Robert Caro’s work on Lyndon B. Johnson.” If the Dylan-LBJ mix wasn’t enough for you, Vanity Fair also waxed poetic about O’Rourke’s age: “Whereas Obama is from the tail end of the baby boom, Beto O’Rourke is quintessentially Generation X, weaned on Star Wars and punk rock and priding himself on authenticity over showmanship and a healthy skepticism of the mainstream.”
