I used to have enormous respect for Julian Assange and Wikileaks because I do not like being lied to by my own government, and Assange was leaking the truth in the face of US government lies. I followed the Snowden leaks very carefully, and was outraged at our government’s mass-surveillance of US citizens that Snowden revealed through Wikileaks. I was particularly disturbed by the Chelsea Manning leaks, which showed a systematic killing of Iraqi civilians, seemingly for entertainment purposes of some American troops. I know war is not pretty, but damn! When you get so desensitized to human life that you think killing innocent human beings is fun, then this is over-the-top.

But when the 2016 election started ramping up, Assange and Wikileaks suddenly changed. They were openly one-sided in the presentation of the material that was leaked through Wikileaks in an attempt to undermine Hillary Clinton’s chance of being elected. At first, I almost fell for Assange’s cover story that he was only trying to boost the cause of the Green Party and Jill Stein, but when I considered that Stein had ZERO chance of winning, it became apparent that he really was boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump. Assange’s one-sided Wikileaks of Podesta and DNC emails was calculated to get Bernie Sanders’ supporters so angry at Clinton and the Democratic Party that they would either stay home and not vote, vote for Stein, or do the unthinkable — vote for Trump.

12 percent of Sanders’ supporters did vote for Trump, and this made a difference in the outcome in WI, MI, and PA. Yes, Hillary screwed up her own campaign by her mishandling of the email episode, tarmac visits with Lynch, and failing to campaign in WI, MI, and Western PA. But to deny the fact that the tension created between Bernie’s supporters and Clinton that was exploited and exacerbated by Assange and Wikileaks had a significant impact on the outcome of the election is dishonest.

So what happened to Julian? How did he go from exposer of US war crimes in Iraq and NSA mass surveillance of its own citizens to being a Trump booster, and why? Trump represents the antithesis of everything the Green Party and Jill Stein stood for, they don’t believe in any of the science that concludes that climate change is real. So if you really are pro-environment, why on Earth would you want to boost the candidacy of someone hellbent on destroying the environment? Assange was rightfully afraid of what might happen to him if Clinton became president, but what would give him confidence that he would not face the same fate with Trump? Most Republican 2016 contenders other than Trump, and the vast majority of Republicans in Congress despise both Snowden and Manning as traitors for their leaks through Assange, and view Assange in particular as a threat to US national security.

The other troubling aspect of Assange’s Wikileaks is, like the one-sided, Trump-boosting leaks, there also appears to be a one-sided approach when it comes to the United States versus Russia. Even though Wikileaks was founded in 2006, there has not been even one Wikileak on Russian government abuse until late 2017, and even that leak was fairly weak and did not tell us much more than what was already known from public sources. This dearth of Wikileaks on Russian abuse is incredible given the stories of abuse we get all the time over the years. Where are the Wikileaks on the missing Muslim Tatars in Crimea? What about war crimes in Chechnya? Mysterious deaths of Russian journalists? What about a Wikileak hack and release on the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter? Nothing! Not a single hack and release to clarify what Russia did in any of these cases. This one-sided approach to hacks and releases only makes sense if Assange himself is part of Russian Intel.

If you are working for Russian Intel and part of their hacker network, you probably would know that Russia has kompromat on Trump. You would therefore feel more secure with Trump as president because Russia could make sure Trump does not do anything drastic that is not approved by the Kremlin. You are starting to see that in Venezuela, in which the US was signaling that they might use military muscle to oust Maduro, and the Kremlin said, no. Therefore, Assange seemed secure holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy, at least for a while. It is a sure bet that Assange read Trump’s public statements during the election that praised Wikileaks as some sort of signal that Trump would not aggressively seek his extradition to the United States if he was elected president.

If it were not for Julian’s narcissism, he may have escaped being handed over to the British to eventually be extradited to the United States. Who in their right mind leaks embarrassing photos of the Ecuadorean president who is protecting you in ‘his’ embassy? It’s like a house guest rummaging through your private papers and belongings and then posting photos of the most titillating and damaging ones for the entire world to see. How long would that person stay in your house? Not very long. One of the common delusions of those suffering from narcissism is that they feel more powerful than they actually are, and are prone to threaten people who may not do what they want. Being able to instruct a worldwide network of hackers to hack into anyone’s phone or computer gave Julian a sense of immense power, but instead of using this power for good as he did initially with the Snowden and Manning leaks, he began using it for self-preservation.

Adding it all up — one-sided Wikileaks to boost Trump’s candidacy for president, one-sided leaks against the US but not against Russia, and self-preservation, narcissistic leaks against a sitting Ecuadorian president, it paints a picture of Assange as someone who was merely free-riding off the free- speech/greater government transparency movement, not its champion. It was just another cover story — “I am a protector of free speech and promoter of government transparency, so anyone opposing me is against these cherished values.” When the reality is that he was simply doing what he was told by the Kremlin to undermine US democracy and sow division in the country to adversely affect US leadership in the world. When Trump calls Charlottesville white-supremacists “very fine people”, it undermines US leadership in the world comprised of mostly non-white people. And to think that Julian had a hand in giving us Donald Trump should draw the ire and scorn of the entire world upon him, not the off-the-cuff praise that does not seem to be very well considered.

Assange is No Free Speech Hero was originally published in Dialogue & Discourse on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the weapons Barack Obama used successfully against white-identity politics was economic populism — the idea that we are all in the same economic boat regardless of racial differences. Obama’s economic populism allowed him to carry fairly white states like Iowa, Indiana, and North Carolina, which are 91, 88, and 72 percent white, respectively. Trump won all three of these states, plus PA, WI, and MI, in part, by appealing to the desire to return (go back again) to when America was ‘great’ and had white pride in its culture, power, and status. There has always been a low-level culture war in America shaped by racial identity, and there was a perception successfully exploited by Trump that people of color were winning that war with the election of Barack Obama. Even Obama’s foreign-sounding African name was being turned into a symbol of retreat from white cultural dominance.

In 2008, with the stock market crashing, record foreclosures, and too-big-to-fail banks looting from Main Street America, Obama continued to remind all Americans, regardless of race, that we all got snookered by Wall Street, not just poor black folks. The poor economy made people forget about their racial differences, and they were looking for economic justice against those who wrecked the economy. No one seemed to care about Obama’s African name, his singing Al Green tunes, or hanging out with Jay Z and Beyonce — he just seemed like a breath of fresh air in speaking truth to power, a wealthy and well-connected white power that turned on all people — white folks as well.

If you fast-forward a couple of election cycles to 2016, with the economy humming again, the stock market recovered, and unemployment headed toward record lows, suddenly things changed. Economic populism did not seem as unifying as it did before, especially when listening to Trump tell you that America is no longer recognizable under Obama, with multi-culturalism gone amok, and open borders bringing in rapists and murderers from Mexico who are creating havoc in America. David Duke was more blunt, “Voting against Trump is treason to your [European] heritage.” This kind of explicit white-power rhetoric resonated with a good number of white voters who were no longer concerned about the economy.

Hillary Clinton did not seem very adept at understanding the culture war she was waging, and even campaigned with Jay Z and Beyonce during the final days of her 2016 campaign. She did not go with Willie Nelson, Shania Twain, or Garth Brooks in the closing pitch to her campaign, she embraced the king of rap and his queen, which probably did not go down very well in Western PA, or rural MI and WI when Trump is reminding you every day that we have lost “our way”. Hillary did not even campaign in WI and MI, essentially taking all of their voters for granted without addressing any of their concerns.

In the 2020 race, Beto O’Rourke seems the most attuned of the 2020 Dems to the current state of identity politics. Like in 2016, the economy continues to hum so economic populism resonates less with those who voted for Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016. So if you can’t get Trump voters to forget about white identity politics with economic populism, what do you do? In Texas, Beto walked a fine line between having voters say “he is one of us” by playing guitar and singing with Willie Nelson, attending Metallica concerts, and reminders of his rock band on the road tours across Trump country, and “he cares about people like me” empathy, both which militate against white identity politics. It was not just getting slapped in the face culturally by Hillary, voters in Western PA, rural WI and MI felt Hillary did NOT care about them like Obama did, and like Beto does now.

The cultural affinity and genuine empathy Beto has with a lot of Trump voters have enormous implications for the 2020 general election electoral map. It translates into winning all the blue states Hillary lost (PA, WI, and MI), winning back the states Obama won in 2008 (IN, IA, NC), and putting a number of states in play like AZ and GA, Beto’s home state of Texas, and other Texas-like states with a similar culture to Texas (OK, KS, AR, MO) that Beto toured when he was in a rock band in his youth. Beto can defeat Trump’s white identity politics because his shared cultural affinity with many Trump voters and his ability empathize with their lived experience as part of his own, transcends any fear about losing white heritage. Economic populism only works against white identity politics when the economy is bad, but Beto’s populism works under all economic conditions, which is probably why he will become our 46th president.

White-Identity Politics and the Promise of Beto O’Rourke was originally published in Beating Trump in the 2020 Election on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I have been searching for a candidate that can not only beat Trump, but move the country in a progressive direction for the next eight years. Obviously, it is not enough to simply espouse progressive views or even vote for progressive causes, it requires special leadership talent to energize and turn out young voters and those who have felt left out of the political process, and significant numbers of independents and Republican voters to support a progressive vision of America. After surveying the entire field of potential candidates, I believe Beto O’Rourke is that candidate.

It is not his charisma and rock star persona — I am actually turned off by celebrity — that convinces me he is the best of the 2020 potential candidates, it is his authenticity and ability to restate progressive views in persuasive terms to reach a broader range of voters. O’Rourke went into some of the reddest towns in Texas and actually moved red voters to support him; not by equivocating or triangulating, but by empathizing with ordinary people so they feel that he genuinely cares about them and their concerns. I haven’t studied the data, but it would not surprise me if O’Rourke’s numbers are off the charts in the Likert Scale polling of “he cares about people like me”. The only other candidate with off-the-chart numbers in that category was Barack Obama.

There is definitely a correlation between authenticity, empathy, and reaching a greater percentage of voters with your message, which would include Republicans. Rednecks for Obama, for example, which was a group of working-class white voters in rural areas that voted for Obama in 2008, probably voted for Bush and Ronald Reagan, but connected with Obama on trans-partisan human terms. They could feel Obama genuinely cared about them even if they had voted Republican in the past, and believed he would do his best to make their lives better if he became president.

Beto has the same trans-partisan appeal, and demonstrated this fact by getting red votes in Texas while retaining his progressive vision for America. When you look at the electoral map from 2016, Hillary was not able to get these voters that Obama got in redder counties in PA, MI, and WI, and a large part of it was the perception that she lacked authenticity and genuine empathy for people like them — they felt they were written off.

I actually like Elizabeth Warren, and support nearly every policy proposal she has put forward, but Trump has already anticipated that the lack of authenticity is her Achilles’ Heel with his nickname routine, not the embellishing of her native ancestry per se. Trump knows that his voters will believe someone is fake who tries to claim native heritage when they are white, and that the same voters Hillary lost in PA, MI, and WI that Obama won, will not pull the lever for anyone they think is not authentic.

No one would accuse Joe Biden of being fake, but there is a serious question of whether he has he been in Washington too long and therefore not able to identify as much as he used to with those who feel left out in America. And does anyone believe Joe Biden can energize the youth vote? Probably not many. Is Biden more likely to triangulate rather than enlist more voters across the spectrum in a progressive vision of America. Yes.

When Ending Citizens United endorsed O’Rourke in his US Senate campaign, it was based on the view that “he means what he says” about fighting the corrupting influence of money in politics, in that he walked-the-walk by raising presidential-like money from only small donors. You project that kind of fundraising nationwide, and we may have the first presidential campaign that is entirely funded by small donors, a feat even Obama or Bernie Sanders could not achieve.

The only question mark in my mind is whether O’Rourke can turn out black voters nationwide, even though he did well turning out his voters in Texas, which included the black, Latino and youth vote. On a national scale, especially in states like SC, NC, VA, and GA that have higher black populations, there is always a question of trust and whether one has a history of being active in and supporting the black community. The El Paso House district that Beto represented only has a 3% black population, which does not provide much of an opportunity for the kind of long history of black community relations needed on a national scale.

That said, listening to O’Rourke’s defense of NFL players kneeing for the anthem was inspiring, and demonstrates a depth of knowledge of black history and its connection to the killing of unarmed black men by the police today. Beto truly gets it that fighting for civil and human rights is just as patriotic as fighting wars in American uniform around the world.

In sum, Beto O’Rourke is a transformative candidate, much like Obama, and has the best chance of beating Trump or whomever the Republicans decide to nominate, and thus securing a lengthy period in which to build on the progressive legacy left by President Obama. We need to enlist the greatest possible number of people in a progressive vision for America, and Beto is the only potential candidate with the skill, empathy, authenticity, and fundraising prowess to make it happen.

• Metteyya Brahmana

The Case for Beto O’Rourke was originally published in Beating Trump in the 2020 Election on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.