Beto!

Finally the guy who lost to Ted Cruz is running for President. No idea why that's good. The campaign that almost beat Cruz actually did some good in Texas dragging a lot of down ballot Democrats into judgeships and state house seats in the process.  It might have been a good idea for Beto to try and see if he could do the same thing again by almost beating John Cornyn. Instead he's doing this. People are excited for some reason.

It’s fairly easy to explain O’Rourke’s rise: he’s a handsome, tall white guy who liberals can project their longings onto, with little substance to get in the way. He’s been called the “white Obama,” which to liberals seems to mean a return to a time when they were on top, when they felt secure that the seething masses of MAGA chuds who now control the country were safely tucked away in their suburbs.

“He has an aura,” Vanity Fair writes.

Cool, but also, who cares?

O’Rourke, Vanity Fair reports, has been drinking the Kool Aid about himself.

“I got in there, and I don’t know if it’s a speech or not, but it felt amazing,” he tells Vanity Fair of a speech he gave during his failed Senate campaign. “Because every word was pulled out of me. Like, by some greater force, which was just the people there. Everything that I said, I was, like, watching myself, being like, How am I saying this stuff? Where is this coming from?”

Oh dear.

In addition to being full of himself, Beto is also just flat out bad. He's been more explicit than most of the Dem field in distancing himself from the left. He opposes Medicare for All, even in name. Defend that as "electable-in-Texas" if you must, but Beto isn't running in a Texas election. He's running in the Democratic Presidential primary field where we have big picture debates about the direction and values of the party. But Beto doesn't believe in very much outside of having an aura or whatever. 

He does distinguish himself as probably the most right leaning candidate to announce so far.  (Biden still isn't in quite yet.) Apart from the conservative positions we've already mentioned, O'Rourke is also married to the heir to a billion dollar real estate fortune which voters in rapidly gentrifying cities with exploding housing crises like, say, New Orleans, can appreciate.  He's also a big charter school guy.  That's sure to do well for him too in places like, say, New Orleans.

Anyway, Beto! He's here! He'll probably be here for a while. Enjoy that.