For way too many months, the Texas senate race was both closely followed by most people and utterly dismissed by some prominent personalities. Kavanaugh seemed to give Ted Cruz a bump, even if it probably wore off, and early indicators looked good for his challenger, Beto O’Rourke. Early voting, while it doesn’t mean much, looked pretty decent for democrats, an some final polls showed the race really close.
And it was. The Texas senate race was closer than many expected. Early on election night it even seemed like Beto had a puncher’s chance at unseating Ted Cruz, which would have been an upset by a lot of standards. However, Cruz retained his seat by about 3%, and he should be happy that he was up this year and not 2022 or something similar, as Texas is getting bluer.
Things aren’t over for O’Rourke, though.
If you were following this election very closely, as I was, you knew that Beto could potentially run for president and that his ideal scenario in the Texas senate election if he wanted to make a run would be for Cruz to pull out a squeaker. If he had won that senate seat, inmeadiately launching a presidential run a couple of months afterwards would be very bad optics, and wouldn’t bode well for him while seeking reelection. Meanwhile, let Cruz prevail by 10 points and you just look like a loser who lost by more than Hillary Clinton in a way better year for D’s. This way, he looks like a good candidate that got unlucky, and it would be a shame to let a very good candidate go to waste like that right?
I’m not even close to certain that Beto is running, but let’s speculate anyways. What would that apparatus look like?
Well, out of all the field he probably has the most options when it comes to choosing a lane to run in. Candidates like Sanders or Warren can’t lose their cred with more liberal voters, otherwise they would be left with no base and collapse. Joe Biden has to be Joe Biden, he can’t just become liberal all of the sudden after more than 40 years of being more of a centrist. Other potential candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar have reserved themselves a bit more flexibility, but they have also boxed themselves into a corner somewhat in recent months (Booker and Harris have moved left while Klobuchar has stayed put).
While Beto would also have some baggage (he ran in Texas mostly as an open liberal) he was also a very party-line democratic backbencher in Congress, so if he decides he’d rather run a more establishment campaign then he can certainly do that, albeit losing trust with the more progressive wing of the democratic party.
But enough about campaign ideology. What about the primaries? Would he have a chance? In short, yes.
Beto has proven that he can attract white voters even in a red state like Texas, and guess what kinds of voters Iowa and new Hampshire have? You guessed it, white, working class and, at least within the democratic party, largely progressive. He would need to have a strong result in Iowa to allow himself to have a weaker result in New Hampshire, and if that didn’t kill his momentum then he’s off to the races.
He could also have a real chance to pick up some sun belt states, particularly Arizona, and he would obviously wield a massive lead in Texas, which has tons of delegates. I’m unsure about how he would fare in Nevada and South Carolina, but if he can pull off a win in either then he would probably be the frontrunner.
Furthermore, what about the general election? What would his particular map to 270 look like?
It would be an understatement to say that I have no idea. It seems like O’Rourke is strong with all constituencies but not particularly so with any specific one of them. Do southern voters feel the «Beto-mania»? Are white midwestern voters excited by his message? I think the former is more likely than the latter, but I can’t say for sure.
So, finally, here are the main strengths and weaknesses:
STRENGTHS:
- Good enough appeal in early primary states (and in most states, really).
- An ability to excite the democratic base.
- An ability to convince moderate voters.
- A wide array of ideological possibilities for his campaign.
- A wide map to get to 270 electoral votes.
- He would be one hell of a VP pick.
WEAKNESSES:
- His potential strategy to appeal to both wings could backfire and end up appealing to no wings.
- He could just fizzle out like so many «rising stars» (also see, Marco Rubio).
- We don’t yet know how strong his appeal would be nationwide, and he needs more than just Texas to win.
- A presidential run, if not terminated soon enough, would prevent him from running for senate again and do lots of damage to his career.
Overall though, I really think the pros outweigh the cons here for O’Rourke. He has proven that he can run an intelligent, effective, good campaign, and that’s pretty much all he needs here if things go his way. He would be a very robust candidate.
But perhaps this is getting a bit ahead of ourselves. We don’t even know if he intends to run or if he is just keeping his options open. One thing’s clear though: the future is bright for Beto O’Rourke.
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