The Beto fantasy

Matt Mackowiak:

Crowing to Vanity Fair, former U.S. Rep. Robert "Beto" O’Rourke claimed he was "born to do this" when asked if he would seek the presidency.

After a funk that lasted several months, Beto claimed his destiny as the 15th Democratic candidate to seek the presidency in 2020.

Texas Democratic elected officials responded with a shrug.

On the morning he announced his decision, 30 elected officials announced they were supporting the other Texas Democrat running for president, former HUD Secretary and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro.

Perhaps now is an appropriate time to ask this simple question: What is the single most significant accomplishment in Beto’s career?

The answer is elusive.

In three terms in Congress, he authored only one bill that became law (renaming a courthouse).

Beto has never made a consequential decision, apart from deciding to run for office.

If you study his life, it’s clear he has been the beneficiary of the exact kind of white privilege that liberals claim they abhor.

He attended a tony private high school, went to Columbia University, wasted time on lazy pursuits, and he always found himself failing up. He could fall back on his family’s business and his father’s political connections, and then leverage his father-in-law’s fortune to begin his political career.

No one would know who Beto is had he not used a Super PAC (partly funded by his father-in-law) to defeat an incumbent Democratic congressman in a primary.

After term-limiting himself through his legislatively irrelevant career in Congress, he chose to challenge Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in 2018.

He overperformed through much of that race, building an enthusiastic following and setting a fundraising record for any U.S. Senate candidate (about $80 million raised). In the end, he lost by 2.5 percent, providing down-ballot help that swept in more than a dozen Democratic candidates across Texas.

Beto thinks that since he caught lightning in a bottle once, he can do it again.

But he is ignoring significant differences between his Senate campaign and a presidential bid.

Every Democrat with a pulse wanted to help him beat Ted Cruz. In fact, the majority of his financial support came from outside Texas. Now, he is just one of 15 announced Democrats.
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There is more.

The Texas media hated Cruz so much they never really vetted O'Rourke.  That has changed now that he is running against other liberals.  In just a matter of hours of his announcement, embarrassing details from his past have surfaced.  O'Rourke has been slippery on the issues in the past, but that will become much harder as he faces more competition from other Democrats.