Beto O'Rourke just hired a "senior advisor" who used to lobby for Keystone XL, Seaworld and private prisons

Jeff Berman's got a new job! The former Obama/Clinton staffer is now Beto O'Rourke's senior advisor, having moved laterally from his post-Obama-campaign career working for the DC lobbyists Bryan Cave, where he lobbied on behalf of Seaworld, the Keystone XL pileline and the private prison industry.

But definitely this is all OK because purity tests will rip the Democratic Party apart. How can we possibly defeat Trump in 2020 unless we're willing to form broad coalitions with people who want to render the planet unfit for human habitation, lock up an infinite number of brown people to enrich wealthy human rights criminals, and torture intelligent sea creatures on behalf of Seaworld owner Blackstone, the world's largest hedge fund?!

Also: lest you fear that Berman will feel isolated in O'Rourke's staff, consider that he's got lots of allies around the office, like O'Rourke chief of staff Jen OMalley Dillon, cofounder of Precision Strategies, whose client roster includes Pfizer, Bank of America and Facebook,

Many of these clients are ostensibly on the opposite side of many of the issues that ORourke is campaigning on. Take, for example, immigration, a central theme of ORourkes presidential run: He launched his campaign in the border town of El Paso, Texas, railing against Donald Trumps immigration policies and stating, For more than 100 years, this community has welcomed generations of immigrants from across the Rio Grande. Yet the GEO Group, for which Bermans work (along with other lobbyists) made Bryan Cave $60,000 in 2010, has profited handily from its business of running private prisons, including immigrant detention centers.