2020: The Two Year Long Election

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump camp descends on Pennsylvania as alarms grow over 2020"

Spoiler

Senior Trump 2020 advisers are headed to Harrisburg on Wednesday to meet with Pennsylvania GOP officials amid mounting concerns about the president’s prospects in the critical battleground state.

Trump's campaign is moving to shore up the state after 2018 midterm elections that saw Republicans get blown out in races up and down the ballot. Compounding the situation is a state party organization riven by turmoil and infighting.

The private meeting, confirmed by a half-dozen party officials, underscores the high stakes for the president in the state. Trump won Pennsylvania by less than 1 percentage point in 2016, and reelection aides view the state’s 20 electoral votes as crucial to his 2020 hopes. Pennsylvania also has symbolic significance: In 2016, Trump geared his campaign toward the state’s large proportion of blue-collar voters, many of whom had traditionally voted Democratic.

The Trump contingent is expected to include political director Chris Carr, who is orchestrating the campaign’s national field deployment, as well as Bill Stepien and Justin Clark, who are overseeing outreach to delegates and state party organizations. Republican National Committee officials are also expected to attend.

The meeting is the first of what Trump aides say will be a series of visits to battleground states. The fact that Pennsylvania is the first stop underscores the state’s importance, they say — and the level of concern about it.

“The party is not in great shape,” said Rob Gleason, a former Pennsylvania GOP chairman. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that.”

The meeting is expected to focus on field deployment, voter data and coordination between state and national officials.

Among those expected to be on hand are Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Val Digiorgio and RNC member Bob Asher. Ted Christian and David Urban, who helped spearhead Trump’s 2016 campaign in the state, are expected to join, as is former GOP Rep. Lou Barletta, an ally of the president who waged an unsuccessful 2018 Senate bid.

Tim Murtaugh, a Trump 2020 spokesman, declined to comment on the meeting other than to express confidence in the president’s prospects in the state.

“The voters of the commonwealth were there for President Trump in 2016 and will be with him again in 2020,” he said.

The Trump campaign has been focused on Pennsylvania for months. In January, DiGiorgio traveled to Washington to privately huddle with reelection aides. The chairman presented a sweeping 2020 blueprint, detailing how he planned to recruit volunteers, target swing voters who bolted the party in 2018 and boost the state party’s lackluster fundraising.

DiGiorgio said in a text that the state party is working closely with Trump's campaign and that he's confident the collaboration will produce "another victory" in Pennsylvania next year.

Wednesday’s meeting comes after months of bad news for the Pennsylvania GOP. In March 2018, Republicans lost a special election in a conservative southwestern Pennsylvania congressional district. In November, Republicans lost Senate and gubernatorial races by double digits as well as three House seats, partly because of a redrawn congressional map that favored Democrats.

Democrats also flipped 16 state legislative seats in the midterms.

The bleeding hasn’t stopped since then. In a special election this month, Democrats won a state Senate seat in a district that Trump carried in 2016. Nationally, it was the first such legislative seat that Democrats flipped this year, prompting grumbling among some Republicans that the state party did not invest enough in turning out voters.

A power struggle, meanwhile, has consumed state GOP leadership, with some Republicans complaining that DiGiorgio lacks fundraising skills and has failed to unite the party after a bruising election for state party chief in 2017.

There have been other black eyes. Last week, Fox News held a town hall with Democratic contender Bernie Sanders in Northampton, a traditionally Democratic county that Trump won in 2016. Prime-time viewers were treated to visuals of Sanders getting cheered in Trump country, leading some to wonder whether Republican organizers failed to lure fans of the president to the event.

Still, there are some indications the party has begun to stabilize. After rumors swirled for months that DiGiorgio critics might stage a vote of no confidence at the state party’s winter meeting, it never materialized.

Bruce Hottle, a state party committee member from western Pennsylvania, had called for state party leadership “to be looked at” before the event. Since then, he’s changed his tune.

“Leadership has taken a hard look at what worked and what didn’t work in the fall campaign and has made efforts to correct it so we don’t fall in that same trap again,” he said.

Others contend that the challenges the party faces in the state aren’t simply operational. A Franklin & Marshall College Poll released last month said just 34 percent of the state’s registered voters approved of Trump’s job performance — a precarious standing for an incumbent.

To win Pennsylvania again in 2020, party officials say Trump will need to pull off a repeat of his 2016 performance by again carrying traditionally blue areas that had gone for Obama four years earlier.

Asher, a longtime GOP official and fundraiser, lavished praised on Trump's reelection campaign for “getting everybody together from all corners of the state and all parts of the party” for Wednesday’s meeting.

“I’m not going in with any preconceived notions,” he said.

 

[fraurosena]

48 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

100% the economy.  I don’t know anyone who wears a maga hat or is outwardly in favor of racist rants and many express disgust at his behavior and seeming like an idiot - but they voted for him and will again.

I see. But what did they vote for in the midterms then? Because the Dems had a landslide then. Didn't the economy factor in? Was that all about healthcare and immigration? 

51 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

i like your view of how we should be,  but how we actually are is far less about humanity than  is decent

I am an eternal and unapologetic optimist. You may not be in a good place (as a country) right now, but underneath all the rot I truly believe is a beautiful and shiny treasure. It won't be easy getting rid of all the putrefaction covering it, but I'm sure that you will eventually get there. It's in your genes to strive for the best after all.

54 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

i fully expect him to win again unless the Dems can put in a centrist leaning candidate who will address the economy as a major issue.

As far as I can tell there isn't a political center anymore. The GOP have moved their goalpost so far to the extreme right of the political spectrum that anything that is even slightly to the left of the spectrum is leagues away from them. They are continuously and unashamedly demonizing democrats, making the very concept of being a democrat a 'dirty' thing, a less than human thing almost. There is no way to reach across the isle. There is simply the far right, and the left. Centrism is gone. For now, at least.

I do agree that addressing the economy should be a major issue. The consequences of the tariff war, the threat to national security, the blatant corruption of the current administration, the human rights abuses (babies in cages ffs), healthcare. All of them are major issues, all of them should be addressed, but yes, the economy, the consequences to the personal finances of voters, that should be number one. Because nothing will get people out to vote more than their own financial interests.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

As far as I can tell there isn't a political center anymore.

There may not be in Washington and that’s the problem.  Millions of us feel we’re not being adequately represented by the politicians as a whole.

i am now a democrat, apparently, since I hate trump and his minions so much but truth be told I think most politicians are narcisisists in it for themselves and the trick is finding the selfish jerk whose interests most align with mine.

midterms, IDk actually except maybe the fact that it’s usually a much lower turn out and those who hate trump likely came out more than they would have with someone less objectionable. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Buttigieg gets first endorsement from member of Congress, Rep. Don Beyer of Va."

Spoiler

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg won his first endorsement from a member of Congress on Wednesday, as Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) announced that he was backing the young Indiana politician known as “Mayor Pete.”

“Everybody I talk to — even my Republican brother-in-law I had breakfast with — is excited about him,” Beyer said in an interview.

Beyer initially did not know what to make of the millennial mayor of South Bend, Ind., who formally announced his White House bid this month.

“I started off as a huge skeptic,” he said. But he looked into the 37-year-old’s background and liked what he saw: He’s former Naval intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan, a Rhodes scholar who speaks seven languages, a Midwesterner who does not shy away from religion, and a mayor with executive experience that many contenders lack.

What really won Beyer over was a series of interviews he heard Buttigieg give.

“The thing that really most impressed me was listening to him,” he said. “I think he’s the most articulate of all the candidates we have. He speaks plainly but very thoughtfully. Politics is about communicating and being able to tell a story well. And I think he does it better than anyone I’ve seen since Barack Obama.”

Beyer endorsed Obama in early 2007 and volunteered on his campaign, knocking on doors for weeks in Iowa ahead of the state caucuses. Beyer, who is serving his third term in Congress, representing a deep-blue Northern Virginia district, plans to do similar work for Buttigieg.

Beyer served two terms as Virginia’s lieutenant governor in the 1990s, was a major fundraiser for Obama and served as U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein from 2009 to 2013.

“I endorsed Barack Obama early, having been moved by both his intelligence and his political capability,” Beyer said in a prepared statement. “I am similarly inspired by Mayor Pete. With him, I feel the promise of a new generation, and I see a way out of the darkness.

“In making this choice, I think of the qualities missing from the current occupant of the Oval Office. They are qualities that Pete Buttigieg exudes: decency, a grounding in history, optimism, a sophisticated grasp of the world and of the dangers of bigotry, and a generosity of spirit. The Democratic field is full of people with these traits, but Pete possesses them to an uncommon degree, and, just as importantly, has a gift for communicating them.”

Beyer said he does not think most voters will care that Buttigieg is gay, saying that “American has largely worked through” anti-gay sentiment. That the mayor is “in a stable marriage with somebody he obviously loves tells us good things about him,” he said.

As for his age, Beyer noted that Buttigieg would be 39 by the time he’d take office — “not much younger than Teddy Roosevelt and John Kennedy, and they did quite well.”

 

[fraurosena]

Wut?!

The article:

Quote

In the months before Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, she tried to focus the White House on one of her highest priorities as homeland security secretary: preparing for new and different Russian forms of interference in the 2020 election.

President Trump’s chief of staff told her not to bring it up in front of the president.

Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”

Even though the Department of Homeland Security has primary responsibility for civilian cyberdefense, Ms. Nielsen eventually gave up on her effort to organize a White House meeting of cabinet secretaries to coordinate a strategy to protect next year’s elections.

As a result, the issue did not gain the urgency or widespread attention that a president can command. And it meant that many Americans remain unaware of the latest versions of Russian interference.

This account of Ms. Nielsen’s frustrations was described to The New York Times by three senior Trump administration officials and one former senior administration official, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity. The White House did not provide comment after multiple requests on Tuesday.

After this article was published on Wednesday, Mr. Mulvaney said through a spokesman, “I don’t recall anything along those lines happening in any meeting.”

He said the Trump administration would not tolerate foreign interference in American elections and was working to prevent it, including by increasing coordination and intelligence sharing among state, local and federal governments.

Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, concurred, saying, “Election security is and will continue to be one of our nation’s highest national security priorities.”

While American intelligence agencies have warned of the dangers of new influence campaigns penetrating the 2020 elections, Mr. Trump and those closest to him have maintained that the effects of Russia’s interference in 2016 was overblown.

“You look at what Russia did — you know, buying some Facebook ads to try to sow dissent and do it — and it’s a terrible thing,” Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said on Tuesday during an interview at the Time 100 Summit in New York.

“But I think the investigations, and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years, has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple of Facebook ads,” he said.

Before she resigned under pressure on April 7, Ms. Nielsen and other officials looked for other ways to raise the alarm.

The opening page of the Worldwide Threat Assessment, a public document compiled by government intelligence agencies that was delivered to Congress in late January, warned that “the threat landscape could look very different in 2020 and future elections.”

“Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians,” the report noted. It also predicted that “Moscow may employ additional influence tool kits — such as spreading disinformation, conducting hack-and-leak operations or manipulating data — in a more targeted fashion to influence U.S. policy, actions and elections.”

By comparison, cyberthreats have taken a back seat among security priorities at the White House.

Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator at the White House last year, leaving less experienced aides to deal with the issue. The National Security Council insisted that the White House had simply eliminated “redundancies,” and had been more active on cybersecurity issues in the last year than it had before the change. In January, Ms. Nielsen fumed when 45 percent of her cyberdefense work force was furloughed during the government shutdown.

Ms. Nielsen grew so frustrated with White House reluctance to convene top-level officials to come up with a governmentwide strategy that she twice pulled together her own meetings of cabinet secretaries and agency heads. They included top Justice Department, F.B.I. and intelligence officials to chart a path forward, many of whom later periodically issued public warnings about indicators that Russia was both looking for new ways to interfere and experimenting with techniques in Ukraine and Europe.

One senior official described homeland security officials as adamant that the United States government needed to significantly step up its efforts to urge the American public and companies to block foreign influence campaigns. But the department was stymied by the White House’s refusal to discuss it, the official said.

As a result, the official said, the government was failing to adequately inform Americans about continuing influence efforts.

Representative Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat who heads the House Intelligence Committee, said there was a “very real risk” of Russian interference in future elections. “We are woefully unprepared because even raising this issue is met with hostility by a president who views any discussion of election security as a threat to his legitimacy,” Mr. Schiff said in a statement on Wednesday.

A second senior administration official said Ms. Nielsen began pushing after the November midterms for the governmentwide efforts to protect the 2020 elections, but only after it became increasingly clear that she had fallen out of Mr. Trump’s favor for not taking a harder line against immigration.

That official said Ms. Nielsen wanted to make election security a top priority at meetings of Mr. Trump’s principal national security aides, who resisted making it a focus of the discussions given that the 2020 vote was, at the time, nearly two years away.

Since last week’s publication of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, on Russian interference in the election that Mr. Trump won, the president has accused the Obama administration of doing nothing in 2016 to push back at Moscow’s intrusion.

The reality is more complex: President Barack Obama gave a private warning to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at a meeting in China in September 2016, and issued sanctions against Russians and expelled 35 suspected spies after the vote. The Trump administration has added to those sanctions.

On Friday, the day after Mr. Mueller’s conclusions were made public, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration would continue to confront Moscow on its attempts to meddle in the 2020 elections.

“Russia interferes in a number of places,” Mr. Pompeo said. “I don’t think there’s been a discussion between a senior U.S. official and Russians in this administration where we have not raised this issue about our concern about Russia’s interference in our elections.”

“We will make very clear to them this is unacceptable behavior,” he said.

But former Obama administration officials said Mr. Trump’s aversion to even discussing the looming threat remains a concern.

“I do believe the Department of Homeland Security and the White House should be prioritizing this threat and should be doing so consistent with the intelligence community’s own assessment,” said Lisa Monaco, who was among officials who worked to counter Russian cyberinterference in 2016 as the White House homeland security adviser to Mr. Obama.

She said parts of Mr. Mueller’s report showed how the threat from Russia had grown.

More recently, officials at the Department of Homeland Security credited unprecedented help from Facebook, Google and Microsoft to block malicious influence campaigns in the 2018 elections, including by taking down inauthentic posts or other suspect activity quickly. Microsoft also warned of attacks on the offices of two senators.

Before the midterms, the United States Cyber Command created a so-called Russia Small Group of American officials to disrupt election influence campaigns by two groups whose members were indicted as part of Mr. Mueller’s investigation: the G.R.U., which is Moscow’s military intelligence agency, and the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm with ties to Mr. Putin.

The United States disrupted the Internet Research Agency’s servers around the midterm elections in November, according to officials briefed on the actions. A declassified after-action report on the 2018 countermeasures by the United States government was expected to be released early this year but has never been published.

Matthew Masterson, a senior adviser at the Department of Homeland Security who coordinates its election cybersecurity, said Russian interference remained a threat as the 2020 presidential campaign approached.

“We continue to expect a pervasive messaging campaign by the Russians to undermine our democratic institutions,” Mr. Masterson said in an interview. “We saw it in 2018, continue to see it and don’t expect it to subside.”

“For us, we recognize that the goal is to undermine confidence in the elections and sow doubt,” Mr. Masterson said.

He said the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is working with American states to fortify election systems to prevent Russians and other hackers from penetrating voter registration records. The department is also working with other federal agencies to provide state officials with more information about election interference efforts.

“Russian intelligence’s 2016 covert actions to divide Americans by interfering in our election were so successful,” said Kevin T. Carroll, a former C.I.A. officer who was a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security during the first two years of the Trump administration.

“Putin will amplify them in 2020,” he said.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

Joe Biden announced.

Battling  for the soul of our nation indeed.

Take Trump behind the gym Joe and show him how it’s done! 

[front hugs > duggs]

I feel conflicted. I would have loved Joe for 2016, but I kind of feel he missed his chance. I look forward to hearing more about the platforms and policies of all the candidates. So far, Elizabeth Warren is definitely a policy front runner at this point. I'm really liking Pete as a person, but he definitely will need to start speaking policy at some point soon and I look forward to hearing what he has to say.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

I’m definitely waiting to hear on policy and there are others I could get behind I’m sure once the details come out...that was just my visceral knee jerk response.

Trump is afraid of Biden and that brings me great joy.

im petty like that.

 

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

Joe Biden announced.

Battling  for the soul of our nation indeed.

Take Trump behind the gym Joe and show him how it’s done! 

Are you getting out your acid washed jeans and feathering your hair in hopes of a ride in his Trans Am?

https://politics.theonion.com/shirtless-biden-washes-trans-am-in-white-house-driveway-1819570732

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

My 20 something daughter made an amusing but not quite SFW comment about Joe’s hotness “back in the day.”

Her brother mocked her for saying that about someone “older than grandpa.”

she reiterated she meant young Joe.  Paused.  Followed up with, “Mom’s old.  If he wasn’t married she could hit that now.”

They then proceeded to have a discussion of what constitutes too old for mom to “hit that” while I questioned why I ever thought having kids was a good idea.

I was very dignified with the kids but between you and me I would so jump in that Trans Am!  Doesn’t even have to be Joe driving - I am ready for my feathered hair mid-life  crisis.  

If I only knew where to buy feathered roach clips these days.

Edited April 25, 2019 by HerNameIsBuffy
Little riffle

[Cartmann99]

3 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I was very dignified with the kids but between you and me I would so jump in that Trans Am!  Doesn’t even have to be Joe driving - I am ready for my feathered hair mod life crisis.  

If I only knew where to buy feathered roach clips these days

Oh man, do I hear you. I recently found a picture of my car from high school and I cried a little.  I've also been working on turning the front bedroom into guest room, and I've lost count of many times I've listened to my 80s music playlist.

Come sit by me on the mid-life crisis bench. I have brownies.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

35 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Oh man, do I hear you. I recently found a picture of my car from high school and I cried a little.  I've also been working on turning the front bedroom into guest room, and I've lost count of many times I've listened to my 80s music playlist.

Come sit by me on the mid-life crisis bench. I have brownies.

I will come sit by you...bringing wine coolers to go with the brownies.

ill be the one pulling up in the Grand National with the KISS half shirt.

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I will come sit by you...bringing wine coolers to go with the brownies.

ill be the one pulling up in the Grand National with the KISS half shirt.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I will come sit by you...bringing wine coolers to go with the brownies.

OOH, yes! I loved the Sun Country orange wine coolers! And brownies are always in style!

Speaking of style, I'll dig out an outfit like this to crash the party!

[Audrey2]

I'll bring the Billy Joel albums and the Zima.

[smittykins]

Do the brownies have a secret ingredient? 

(Is there room for an early-Chicago fan who doesn’t drink?)

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, smittykins said:

Is there room for an early-Chicago fan who doesn’t drink?)

Absolutely! Will you be wearing your jellies, jams, t-shirt with a vest a la Ferris Bueller, or a rugby shirt with pegged pants?  Or will you do the neon or Flashdance looks? (I was in high school in the late 80's, so that's my fashion reference.) Don't forget your acid washed jeans.

Yeah, looking back 30 years later, not nearly as stylin' as we thought we were.

[milkteeth]

Biden has been preparing to run for how long, and he still can't take responsibility for his actions and apologize to a woman that he dragged through the mud just to further his career.

 

 

Edited April 26, 2019 by milkteeth

[SilverBeach]

On 4/24/2019 at 8:50 AM, milkteeth said:

Instead we should be focusing on the vast number of people in this country who don't vote, and figure out how we can get them engaged.

Ding-ding-ding we have a winner. Fuck hard-core presidunce lovers. They are a minority.

[Cartmann99]

13 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Absolutely! Will you be wearing your jellies, jams, t-shirt with a vest a la Ferris Bueller, or a rugby shirt with pegged pants?  Or will you do the neon or Flashdance looks? (I was in high school in the late 80's, so that's my fashion reference.) Don't forget your acid washed jeans.

Yeah, looking back 30 years later, not nearly as stylin' as we thought we were.

Last week, I found a picture of myself from the late 80s proudly wearing acid washed jeans.  

Edited April 26, 2019 by Cartmann99

[GreyhoundFan]

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Beto O’Rourke switches his style and tone as the spotlight dims"

Spoiler

As Beto O’Rourke prepared last month to tell the world that he would run for president, Vanity Fair unveiled its April cover featuring the Democrat from El Paso on a dusty road with his pickup truck, his dog and these words: “Man, I’m just born to be in it.”

In the six weeks since O’Rourke got in it, the former congressman has gone from the buzzy celebrity candidate — the one trailed by dozens of journalists, compared to Barack Obama and photographed by Annie Leibovitz — to just another Democrat in a crowded field, struggling to stand out as he adjusts his message of unity to the Democratic electorate’s anger and demands for specifics.

With that magazine still on the racks, O’Rourke is quickly learning that this race is not going to be easy. When he formally kicked off his campaign with a rally in El Paso on March 30, more than 1,000 supporters in all 50 states hosted watch parties. Two Saturdays later, the campaign could get only a third of that number of hosts to organize door-knocking events in their communities.

Over the past weeks, O’Rourke, 46, has subtly adjusted his campaign style and tone in ways that counteract the criticism and mockery he has faced.

He has stopped jumping atop counters and chairs at events, as he did during the early days of his campaign, gestures that inspired the Twitter account @BetoOnThings and some gentle ribbing from fellow presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind. Recently O’Rourke did step onto a small wooden box while speaking to hundreds of University of Virginia students crowded into an atrium, but he decided mid-event to step back down.

O’Rourke has stopped joking about being an absentee father and regularly acknowledging he has benefited from white male privilege. He has pushed back against assertions that he’s a blank slate who lacks experience and has added a “vision” section to his campaign website that includes many of his broad goals, including establishing a universal health-care system, increasing teacher pay, reducing the cost of higher education, reforming the criminal justice system and combating climate change.

O’Rourke’s handling of many Democratic voters’ needs for a rhetorically different approach has developed in full view. In his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign, O’Rourke favored a sunny, optimistic pitch, only rarely castigating his Republican opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz.

He has tried to stay true to that approach, but he now calls the president “racist” and regularly compares his rhetoric to Hitler’s, an escalation of his prior criticism of Trump and his administration.

He specifically began to take aim at Education Secretary Betsy DeVos after hearing several voters do the same, including a frustrated retired educator in North Carolina who called DeVos “a lunatic.” The crowd, gathered at a pub in Greensboro, laughed and applauded, while one man shouted: “Amen!”

“Well, I would put it differently,” O’Rourke said gently. “But, we’ve got our work cut out for us. Let’s be respectful of everyone.”

At a town hall the next day in Virginia, O’Rourke pledged to protect schools from DeVos, prompting spirited applause. The day after that, he confidently asked a crowd in Fredericksburg, Va.: “Do you all think that we can do better than Betsy DeVos as secretary of education?” The crowd loudly cheered, and O’Rourke said: “I do, too.”

Some of O’Rourke’s supporters are concerned about his newly diminished profile; he is rarely featured on cable news and has yet to do a televised town hall, like the one that gave Buttigieg his breakout moment. When asked about this at a town hall, O’Rourke explained that meeting voters “eyeball to eyeball is so much more satisfying than being on cable TV” but that “at some point, I may have to give in.”

While that sort of national exposure can help with fundraising and growing name recognition, O’Rourke’s campaign is hoping that his time is better spent personally meeting voters, who will then spread the word of his candidacy to their co-workers, relatives and friends. One aide noted that it’s easier to recruit a volunteer who has met the candidate than one who has simply seen him on television.

So far, O’Rourke has done more than 110 events in more than 85 cities and answered more than 635 questions from voters, according to a count kept by his campaign. O’Rourke’s staff has been quick to point out that, unlike some other candidates, he has not yet held a private fundraiser — although that will change on May 13 when he attends his first in New York City and privately meets with donors.

O’Rourke is also rushing to hire more staffers, especially in states with early primaries, something that many other candidates have been working on for months. He launched his campaign without a chief manager and with much of the same skeletal staff that led his 2018 Senate effort. Growing pains have marked its expansion.

There was wide speculation that O’Rourke would hire Becky Bond, a longtime liberal organizer who helped him build a massive grass-roots network in Texas, to run his campaign. Instead, O’Rourke last month hired Jen O’Malley Dillon, who was Barack Obama’s deputy campaign manager in 2012. Bond — along with her associate Zack Malitz, who was O’Rourke’s field director on the Senate race — recently left the campaign.

The campaign has announced state directors in Iowa and South Carolina, and it is expected to soon do so in New Hampshire and Nevada. In Iowa, O’Rourke now has 16 staffers, the Des Moines Register reported Wednesday, which is smaller than many Iowa teams, including that of former congressman John Delaney, who is far less known but has about 25 staffers in Iowa.

Those who worked on O’Rourke’s Senate campaign often think of it in two phases: before and after an August 2018 viral video of him defending football players who kneel during the national anthem to protest racial inequality. Although O’Rourke had already attracted significant national attention, his exposure exploded after that video — as did donations to his campaign — and paved the way to his presidential bid.

That experience has left O’Rourke and his top aides hoping for the same sort of jolt to strike again. He has delivered lengthy, emotional monologues on systemic racism, the real-life consequences of racist rhetoric and the psychological damage done to young migrant children who are separated from their parents.

During a recent town hall in Virginia, an immigrant from El Salvador asked O’Rourke to provide specifics on how he would persuade Congress to grant citizenship to young undocumented immigrants.

O’Rourke answered with the stories of immigrants he has met and how they have improved the communities where they live. He said these “dreamers” should be made citizens as a testament to America’s values and by “finding the common cause with Republicans.”

“Anyway you measure it — in economic growth, in jobs created — immigrants add, they do not take from this economy,” O’Rourke said to cheers. “In the ways that we cannot measure — who we are, our quality of life, the story that we tell ourselves and our kids about what America represents.”

He never got to the specifics. And that particular moment, like so many for O’Rourke recently, has yet to go viral.