Personally I think Beto O’Rourke is hilarious. I mean, come on, the furry thing, the dabbing, the wildly flailing arms and the complete lack of substance. He’s a laugh riot. Unfortunately for the presidential candidate, 8th graders aren’t quite as amused with him as he completely bombed at a recent middle school appearance. Considered a “rockstar” of the democratic party just a few months ago, even teenagers are tired of his slacker doofus routine.
I’ve never run for president so I hardly qualify as an expert on the subject, but my general impression is that you want to reach the voters and convince them to support you. Beto O’Rourke has different ideas however and was campaigning at a middle school in Iowa trying to capture the non-existent 8th grader voting bloc. These kids are 13 to 14 years old and at best will be 15 come the Iowa caucuses so even if democrats could extend voting rights to 16-year-olds, they still wouldn’t even be able to vote for Beto.
Actually, as The AP reports it wasn’t an issue that these 8th graders couldn’t vote for Beto because they definitely wouldn’t:
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke visited an 8th grade civics class Monday and found students ready with tough questions about school shootings and climate change — and not willing to laugh at the usual campaign trail jokes he uses to make adults chuckle.
It’s not O’Rourke’s jokes that make adults chuckle, it’s his ridiculous persona and his undeserved sense of self-importance, but carry on.
More than 40 students piled into a classroom and O’Rourke began with a brief introduction that echoed comments he makes several times a day while campaigning. When he joked about his Republican mother voting for him during the Senate race, an adult listening from the back was the only one who laughed. Ditto for comments about finding rare independent voters in Texas.
I think I’ve identified the problem here: his material sucks. Jokes about his mother voting for him and the political affiliations of Texans is comedy death. He she have told the one about how he tried to trick his wife into eating baby poop. Who doesn’t like jokes about shit? I’m telling you, shit jokes will slay any age group.
Asked about his lack of early laughs afterward, O’Rourke nodded and said: “It’s, yeah, maybe a little bit of a different audience.” But, he added, “The best thing that I could have done is just listen to them and answer their questions.”
See what I’m saying? This guy is freakin’ hysterical. He knew that he was going to speak to a group of young people and was taken by surprise that it wasn’t the usual crowd of adults he speaks to. What did he think it was going to be? A special ed middle school with dolts in their 20’s still stuck in the 8th grade? Actually, I’m sure he was hoping for that because I think that would be his base if he had one. He’s polling in the low single digits.
Sadly, the teacher who invited O’Rourke to speak to his class landed the only real joke of the day. Teacher Tyler Stewart passively aggressively asked O’Rourke to come back for the Iowa primaries in February of next year by saying, “If you’re still [hanging] around, we’d love to have you back.”
Beto O’Rourke can’t even excite a room full of 8th graders. Clearly he won’t still be hanging around in February. Stick a fork in his furry ass, he’s done.
