Thread by @JewhadiTM

The campaign reboot of @Betoorourke is long on rhetorical opposition to the "racist" president, short on much policy besides a "mandatory" assault weapons buyback. reason.com/2019/08/15/bet… via @reason

Former media darling halted his long poll slide after the El Paso shooting by blaming it on Trump, and is now hoping Democrats forget his past centrism.

And since the El Paso shootings, and O'Rourke's subsequent viral "What the fuck?" video, the candidate has finally halted the long, humiliating polling slide that began right around when South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg start stealing Beto's youthful, semi-centrist thunder.

The last baker's dozen of national polls have O'Rourke at near 4 percent, compared to previous dozen's 2.5 percent.

That might well be a blip, similar to the rise and fall of Sen. Kamala Harris, but O'Rourke clearly feels invigorated by his last two weeks of trading Iowa corn dogs for community grieving sessions and withering critiques of Trump's alleged white supremacy.

Sounding maximally #resistance-woke—even prior to the shooting, O'Rourke was confessing his familial history of owning slaves—is one way of de-emphasizing the candidate's less traditionally progressive views on issues such as charter schools, free trade, and the national debt.

That's a strategy he has in common, albeit with different issue sets, with a group of his competitors I like to call the Transitionals, as in they are transitioning away from whatever deviations from progressivism they were previously known for.

So: Kamala Harris the cop is posing as a criminal justice reformer. Kirsten Gillibrand is talking less about her past of being a Blue Dog Democrat who opposed the 2008 bailout and the 2011 debt-ceiling increase and more about her future of educating people about "white privilege"

Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) is downplaying school choice while upfronting slavery reparations. Budget-balancing free trader Julián Castro has made headlines this campaign mostly by attacking both Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Beto O'Rourke from the left.