Progressive Political News

During the third Democratic Presidential debate back in September, candidate Beto O'Rourke gave the Republicans a major gift when on the debate stage he exclaimed, "Hell yes we're going to take your AR-15's, your AK-47's". O'Rourke has also proposed a mandatory gun buyback program with the aim of getting rid of assault style weapons. Republicans were then able to use these comments to fabricate a story of the evil tyrannical government coming to take your guns away You could be fair to O'Rourke and say that he hadn't necessarily thought of the constitutional ramifications of such a policy, got caught up in the debate frenzy and wanted to use the issue of gun control to stand out from his opponents. O'Rourke hails from a state (Texas) that experienced a anti-Hispanic mass shooting at the beginning of August in which 22 people died. Fox News, of course, leapt at the opportunity to criticise O'Rourke and his comments. Fox News host Jess...

Many people have been questioning why Beto O'Rourke chose to run for President after narrowly losing a Texas Senate race to Ted Cruz, with his popularity within Texas seemingly not being able to translate nationwide. It's been argued from some in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that O'Rourke's popularity within Texas was due to him running against Ted Cruz from the left - refusing to take PAC money, supporting Medicare for All and publicly supporting Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. It was also suggested that the enthusiasm for O'Rourke was merely because of Ted Cruz's low approval rating , with only 27% strongly supporting and 31% strongly disapproving of Cruz.  Morning Consult's Senator popularity rankings gave Ted Cruz a 36% disapproval rating. O'Rourke's popularity was clearly evident during his Senate run, breaking the record for the most amount of money raised in a single quarter by a US Senate candidate with $38.1m raised in...