True. I’m unique in that I’m in Chicago and we’ve got a competitive Mayoral race so I’ve been bombarded with political ads since basically the end of the midterms, whereas the rest of the USA has had a break since the midterms.
I don’t see how you go from a losing Senate campaign to the presidency. Abraham Lincoln notwithstanding. Sure, Beto was a member of the House, but Dennis Kucinich never had a chance, and Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t either. Realistically, to have a good shot at winning the nomination you need to be a senator or governor, or more rarely something of equivalent stature like Speaker of the House (Gephardt might have had a shot way back when) or very high rank in the military (e.g. Wesley Clark).
I’m especially disappointed because if anyone had a chance to unseat Cornyn, it’s Beto. The Dems have plenty of presidential candidates. What they need to work on is the Senate and state-level offices. Maybe he can still make a successful run for governor in 2022. But I’m not sure his presidential campaign will help.
Dream team: Biden for Prez, Beto for VP.
I think he’s a serious candidate and can definitely win.
I thought the quote in post 2 was odd when I read it:
But he’s NOT a progressive, as far as I can tell. He doesn’t support Medicare for All and AFAIK he hasn’t signed on to the Green New Deal. What radical, edgy ideas is he pushing? He seems pretty moderate from here.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…:)but I agree with whoever said that his supporters seem to project their own ideology onto him. Which is pretty much how Obama won the nomination, but he only had one opponent, who didn’t really have any major ideological differences with him. I doubt that will fly this time.
So yeah, he’s in the moderate lane with Biden and Klobuchar. I think he might have the charisma to win that lane, and then who knows? OTOH, moderates tend to place a lot of importance on experience, which is obviously a weakness.
I hope/expect that the Biden/Beto ticket is not happening. I don’t think the Democrats are going to run a ticket of two white guys again in my lifetime. But he could make a good running mate for any of the non-white guy candidates.
I donated to him last year because Ted Cruz, and I’ve already gotten multiple texts soliciting additional donations. That’s actually kind of annoying.
I thought it was all part of his miracle fund-raising ability. Now, the same tactics are annoying? Imagine that! 
Actually, he can still run against Cornyn. The primary filing deadline will be at the end of this year, so he can dip his toes in the Presidential waters, raise a boatload of money, see if he catches fire early and if not announce that he’s decided he can best serve his country in the Senate. And all of that money he raised he can slide right over to his Senate campaign.
I don’t recall ever getting followup texts from him last election, though. E-mails beyond counting, of course, but that’s to be expected. I’ll allow it this time because it’s his kickoff, but if it continues I’ll…um, be annoyed?
Seth Myers proposes a test for candidate utterances: “Would we make fun of Trump if he said that?”
OTOH, About a minute after the Youtube setting above, a FoxNews man denigrates Beto because of his large library: “As if it’s a big plus that he reads books.” :smack:
I hope at least most of this impressive mass of people running for President are thinking something similar - that the nomination will be decided, or at least down to at most 2 or 3 possibilities, on Super Tuesday at the latest, *before *the filing deadlines for Senator or Governor in their states.
You and me, both, Elvis. This thing will be done in about five weeks next February and March. But there’s more to play for than just the White House.
Most of the people running are already senator or governor in their states.
I wouldn’t worry too much about good candidates not being available for Senate and governor runs. If Beto goes nowhere by Super Tuesday he can still run for Senate in TX, although I suspect Abbott is his actual target. And as I said in another thread, I don’t think it’s healthy for all the candidates to be blue staters. Sure, the red and purple staters could be running other races, but let’s not have the campaign exist in a blue state bubble.
Of course most of the candidates are going to be blue staters, because that’s where Democratic politicians hold office. But there are and historically have been plenty of candidates from purple and even red states.
Is it ever not? I mean, surely if you’re in ninth place at that point the fundraising is gonna dry up. Sure no one really thinks John Hickenlooper will be able to afford gas for his campaign bus all the way to November 2020.
The last time the Democrats had a really competitive multi-way primary was, really, 2004. Howard Dean got off to a fast start but was closely pursued by Kerry, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, Wesley Clark, Bob Graham, and more. Lieberman too, now that I think about it. Iowa however put Kerry in front and Super Tuesday clinched it.
In 1992, Bill Clinton laid waste to the opposition on Super Tuesday and practically eliminated the entire field save Jerry Brown, who fought on for awhile.
I mean, let’s be honest… of the five thousand people running for the Democratic nomination, most will not even be serious candidates going into Iowa. (Sorry, Elizabeth Warren.) Iowa and NH will whittle it down to four or five possibilities, tops, and Super Tuesday will make it quite apparent who’s going up against Trump.
Trump and the Republicans seem to be more scared of Beto than any of the other Dems that are running. The official GOP twitter account posted a photoshopped picture of Beto’s mug shot from his drunk driving arrest back in the day.
https://twitter.com/GOP?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
There are several tweets from the official GOP twitter account attacking Beto. Since the beginning of the month they have only tweeted twice attacking any of the other Democratic candidates, once for Hickenlooper and once for Gabbard. If the GOP is that afraid of him they probably think Beto has a better chance than any of the other candidates.
This is what convinces me that they will have no problem forgetting about Donald Trump in a few years and return to pretending to care about family values and morals and whatnot. If a DUI is disqualifying for a presidential candidate, this seems to be a new policy for the GOP
The GOP is scared of “psychedelic warlord?” Perhaps.
The Bernie Bros have the knives out for Beto big time as well, slamming him as a faux progressive.
Today on the campaign trail, a lengthy apology for “white privilege” and telling a harmless joke about his wife, and a shorter apology for writing a story about murdering children.
That hardly proves that the Republicans are the most scared of Beto. It may simply be that they posted those Tweets because they view him as an easy target for mockery.
They were lampooning him is all, trying to make him look mockable.
O’Rourke’s DUI incident has made me think a little. From what I’ve heard it may have been bad enough that he was driving on the wrong side of the highway. This was in the '90s and there will almost certainly be no surveillance or dashcam video of him putting people in danger unearthed. We’ve talked about a world where the possibility of old social media posts could change how we see a younger Brett Kavanaugh. Somewhere down the line there will be a major candidate who has a previously unseen video of them on the roadways surface behaving in a way that much of the public has a visceral reaction to. Something more reckless and dangerous than the “Don’t you know who I am!?” they always pull.