The Democrats seem to want to create the clown show the Republicans created last time around. Everyone does not need to run for president. #NoBernieNoBidenNoBeto

"If he can't beat Cruz in Texas, he's not going to beat Trump in the general."

That's quite a claim. Maybe you could at least explain how it figures. Whatever else O'Rourke may be, he was a Democrat running for a state wide office in Texas. How well do you suppose Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders would have done running against Ted Cruz in 2018? Do you mean to suggest someone like that would have done better?

To the extent I have prefs for Democrat nominee, O'Rourke is waaaaaay down the list. And like a zillion other lefty types, I think he'd be much more useful running against for the other Senate seat Cornyn. But as far as it goes, any Democrat who can actually win the nomination will have a reasonable crack at beating Trump.

"If he can't beat Cruz in Texas, he's not going to beat Trump in the general." Congrats. That one sentence renders everything you wrote above meaningless.

Beto may not be the right person to be the Democratic nominee. He's not my favorite but I'll give him a listen. However, you, my friend, are definitely not the right person to be delivering any type of political predictions.

"Inslee's complete dominance of the field is unmistakable"

Four years ago pundits were debating whether Jeb Bush or Scott Walker would win the nomination. Let's not get too comfortable with our punditry at this early stage.

Agree with @3. All I care about is that whoever gets the nomination 1) beats Trump and 2) if possible, ushers in a Democratic Congress. Everything else, every policy position, anything...I don’t give a shit. Somebody has to create a wave capable of washing the criminal enterprise that is the modern GOP completely the fuck out of power. You and others on the left are forgetting about the power of optics. Beto looks like a winner. Can you imagine how bad Trump will look standing next to him in a debate? All the other nominees to this point just lack a certain presence, and that shit matters. The policy positions can come later. On a national level, this guy has more lightning in his bottle than anybody else in the Democratic Party. And you know what? He might not have beat Cruz in Texas, but he damn well might beat Trump there. Flipping Texas is just the kind of wave I’m talking about.

Beto ran an outstanding campaign based on an impressive ground game. That said, it’s somewhat mystifying that he’d choose to run for president rather than preparing for a far more realistic and potentially successful run for governor, which would be a much better fit for both Beto and Texass.

I was a supporter of Beto's race against Cruz, financially and otherwise, but I'm not hot on him as a presidential candidate. Some of my reasons for that are enumerated by Rich here, particularly his lack of experience and voting record.

However, I am disappointed by Rich's identity-based attack upon Beto (like you, Rich, Beto is a white man but that doesn't mean people who like him are racist) and his purity tests (sorry, Rich, but the next president, whoever that may be, will likely use drones to kill people). This is is exactly the sort of divisive thinking that alienates potential voters from ideologues in the press and ultimately endangers the ability of the press to communicate effectively.

Try interjecting a little more fact into the opinions you publish here, Rich. It'd be nice if reading your political coverage in Slog was actually informative. Maybe Katie can give you some tips?

Oh, and your idea that it is somehow easier for a Democrat to win a Senate seat in Texas than it is for a Democrat to win the presidency is really quite laughable.

I do find it concerning he couldn't manage to draw 50% of registered voters to the box in a very high profile election against Cruz in the very congressional district he represented for 6 years. It appears his own constituents failed to be motivated by the rhetoric and the voting record.

El Paso County: 204 k voted in 2018 out of 429k registered voters (as of 2016)

"If he can't beat Cruz in Texas, he's not going to beat Trump in the general." Really? That is about the worst logic I've ever seen in my life. Texas is a battleground state only if Beto runs. Ever other democratic candidate gets slaughtered there. What's more, no democrat EXPECTS to win here nor is that the only way for a democrat to win the presidency. I'm truly sorry I read this article all the way through for you to reach that conclusion.

@7 " it’s somewhat mystifying that he’d choose to run for president"

He is heavily promoted by 3rd-way neoliberal Democrats. I'll bet he will be their main horse in the race, which would suggest that Biden is probably not running.

I think he would make a fine running mate for Kamala...or Cory.

@6 That attitude is how we got Clinton...

And how we lost the presidency.

@2 "Do you mean to suggest someone like that would have done better?

Only someone capable of increasing voter turnout significantly could do that. It's unclear that a "centrist" could do much better.

@14 I guess what Smith must have meant is that the rationale for Beto is an appeal-to-moderates electability thing. And if his moderate appeal wasn't enough to win him Texas then it wouldn't be enough to win him the general on that basis.

I generally think "electability" is bullshit. Election outcomes are decided by fundamentals (i.e. war and the economy), not by how somebody looks on stage. Ambiguous fundamentals lead to ambiguous outcomes, like in 2016. And that leaves people free to invent whatever story they like about why that happened.

The key question is who's the Democrat most likely to win in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida? Is Beto that guy? We don't need a candidate who does better in states that are already dark blue but who can't secure a majority in swing states. Although I'd much prefer about 10 other candidates, including our governor, Biden is best situated to take the rust-belt and Florida. Best case in my view: Biden wins a single term and then passes the baton to vice-president Harris.

Rich is mad because his Beto impression sucks.

@14: If the R base is less than 50%, and the L base is less than 50%, there's a center.

Professional political folk-wisdom holds that voters tend to like a candidate who's likable.

16: Agreed. It's exasperating how the far left continues to somehow interpret the election of Donald Trump as a call for more socialism. It's about as logical as the authors assertion that because O'Rourke lost a fairly close race in a solidly red state he wouldn't be competitive in a national race, where far more voters identify as Democrat and independent than Republican.

I'd need to know more about O"Rourke, but should he be someone with progressive ideas and a broad appeal I have no doubt that he'd have a better chance in Wisconsin and Ohio than someone like Sanders, who'd be branded as an old commie dilettante and scare the hell out of the regular folk. I don't understand why the lefties don't get this. Oh yeah, they heard or read about a couple of polls that show people like the idea of free healthcare and college. So that settles that, I guess.

It's hilarious people still think trump will be on the ballot.

Trump only cares about one issue: immigration. Beto is from a border town, which I suspect means he is about as prepared as any candidate to go head to head with Trump. That is one potential positive to Beto. And my friends in Texas went apeshit over him in 2016 like he was the new JFK or something. He must have some kind of “it” factor, which is what you kind of look for in a prez. I am interested to learn more about him and all the 2020 candidates over the next 19 (?) months. Oh god, we are in for a prolonged period of torture aren’t we?

If you think Beto's run is a pointless exercise by an empty suited nobody with no resume and no accomplishments and only the fatuous adoration of the Tiger Beat Democrats going for them just wait till Stacey Abrams announces....

With all these candidates running, how is Iowa and New Hampshire going to work? Will someone be considered a success or front runner with 15 percent of the vote?

Inslee dominance? I assume that was being sarcastic? He barely makes the top 10 list in most polls.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/12/poll-biden-bernie-beto-lead-2020-dems-983995
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/12/18221752/2020-democrats-biden-bernie-sanders-beto-poll
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/07/politics/2020-democrats-rankings/index.html

I don't know who the best candidate is this time around, but I feel like we need to be much more strategic with a two pronged approach -- a solid progressive platform AND a candidate most likely to win. Those are not necessarily the same thing this early in the process. Dems need to win first, THEN nitpick over policy nuances of the platform AFTER they are in power. Trump's personal and political history was almost the antithesis of Republicans, evangelicals, etc. but once it was clear he was their best chance at winning they picked him and rode their dream platform on abortion, immigration, supreme court, etc. right into the White House. Did the evangelicals pick a candidate with more "pure" histories like Huckabee or Santorum? Nope because they wanted to win.

Luckily ALL of the 2020 Dems are infinitely better people than Trump so we don't have to make such a devil's choice but we should definitely pick the Dem that is most likely to win THEN that candidate carries the most agreed upon progressive platform forward regardless of what their previous positions may have been. I don't know if Beto is that person (it does seem a little early for him), but if we start using identity/purity tests to jettison candidates that might have the broadest coalition of support and go with another candidate that can't connect with more than 50% of the country (especially the working class) then the entire platform is DOA and we end up with another 4 years of Trump.

@16
Yes, the Dems need the upper Midwest states.
And, can they get the Millennials to vote?
I'm a Boomer - 60% of us vote.
But only 30% of Millennials vote. If they voted in the same percentage as Boomers, they would kick Boomer ass around the block!

@21 It’s exasperating how centrists take Trump’s election as a sign to go farther left, despite Centrist Hillary’s getting a smaller percentage of the voting population than John Kerry got when he ran against George W. Bush (2nd term).

"Beto's bid will be fruitless so long as Jay Inslee stays in the race. The same is true for every other 2020 candidate. But you just never know what's going to happen this early in a presidential race... "

Nevertheless, Jay's got it in the Bag?

Has he got the Charisma thing going on?
Perhaps, I just need to see him in person.

I saw Bernie -- and the Passion he inspired was Palpable.
If Jay's got a smidgen or two of that, perhaps you're correct, Rich.

Oh and, my-oh-my, how Wonderful it is, for NeoLibs and Cons to be
instructing The Left to Keep Right (just like Hillary's Campaign logo!).

AOC's got y'alls fucking Terrified, don't she?
Good. There's Plenty More, where she came from.

Oh, and Millenials don't give a FUCK about 'Socialism.'
They're eyewitnesses to Capitalism's winner-take-ALL
and they're not all that fucking Fond of it.

Especially when they see what your Capitalism does to a whole fucking Planet.

He's cute. That's worth a possible vote. He's also not Trump. That alone is worth a win.

Beto will win the nomination and go on to lose the general election by a narrow margin. The Democratic National Committee will declare this to be a victory because, they say, nobody thought it would even be close.

Some months later, private emails will be leaked to the press indicating that the DNC chair had already decided Beto would win before the first debate, because “it’s his turn”. A tell all book by one of the debate moderators will suggest that the answers to debate questions were fed to Beto before the debate took place. Pissed off Democrats will attack Bernie supporters and Green Party voters, who obviously colluded with Russia because they’re all sexist.

Two years later, when the Democrats win majorities in both houses, Pelosi will take impeachment off the table for fear that Dan Lipinski might lose re-election. Dan Savage will gush about how brilliant a tactic this is, 14 dimensional chess as he calls it, because it makes Trump both the victim and the perpetrator. Everyone will congratulate themselves as Congress approves Trump’s latest bill to ban abortion and same sex marriage.

31

Making personal arsenals mandatory,* trumpfy bans the 1st amendment, putting Rupert uncle snoopy Murdoch in charge of the Ministry of re-Education Camps for those not sufficiently dedicated to far far Far "right" misogny, bigotry, hate crimes, terrorisms and general sociopathies & psychopathies.

You must spend AT LEAST one-half of your post-tax income on weapons.
Of ANY size, 'cause, who couldn't use a fucking Tank w/twin flamethrowers, or two.

Oh, and any/all women must be scantily clad, HWP, and
accompanied by a Trumpfiest Party Member, at all times.

Bleach sales Skyrocket