Why can’t he run if he wins?
If the Dems get a Senate seat in Texas, no way they give it up after two years.
He could, but 1) He’s vowed (for what it’s worth) to serve out his term if he wins the Senate seat, and 2) I would really hate to see him give up a Senate seat in Texas just two years after that hard-fought battle of turning it blue; you can bet the governor ain’t gonna put another Dem in to replace him. Plus he’s been slamming Cruz for essentially winning his Senate seat and then turning around to run for president.
Granted, Obama did the same thing, but I wasn’t too worried about Blago handing his Senate seat over to a Pubbie. And he took shit for it too. But I’d rather see Beto run for president as a 3-term Congressman who lost his bid to unseat Cruz in a squeaker, than run as a Senator who’s served only two years of his term.
Or he could run in 2024 after his first full term as Senator.
Makes better sense. We don’t have anyone that can beat Trump anyway.
Of course we do. Trump is an accidental president who lost the popular vote and won by a fluke in the electoral college. He is attracting fewer voters, not more. Any reasonably competent Democrat can beat him.
I sure hope you’re right Fear Itself.
If you want to speculate about 2020, consider that
[ul]
[li] Taft, Hoover, Carter and Bush-the-elder were all elected with majority popular vote totals – these are the only 20th Century presidents who lost their bids for re-election, lasting but one term[/li][li] Nixon, Clinton and Bush-the-younger did not garner majorities in their first elections, yet they won a second term[/li][li] Hi Opal![/ul][/li]
This does not bode well for anyone who hopes for a change in the executive branch in 2020. But at least we can hope for a change on Capitol Hill, and that Beto will be a lasting part of that.
It’s been out for several days now. I wonder why RealClearPolitics hasn’t updated their running tally of Senate polls with it though? Is there an issue with the methodology, laziness on the part of RCP, a bias against internet polls?
I’m also surprised that there wasn’t a major public poll after the first debate. As I wrote earlier, I’m interested in seeing what the CBS YouGov poll says, as I thought it had decent predictive value in previous Texas Senate and Governor contests.
That strikes me as pretty specious analysis. It ignores 3rd party candidates, Obama and Reagan.
So how can I help?
I live in a county in Texas that went 58% for Trump in 2016. I grew up in (and still have close dear friends in) a county that went 76% for Trump. My younger sister lives in Austin, and thankfully she’s already in Beto’s camp. I’m locked and loaded ready to vote for Beto, but I’m not optimistic about his chances.
As just a regular Joe Schmoe, is there anything I can do to up his odds? I keep harking back to a ‘Modern Family’ episode where Phil was picking up and driving older folks to get out and vote (if I remember right, one of them was “the Colonel” from ‘Boogie Nights’? but that’s beside the point).
If I was in Austin, and I thought I had good odds of picking up people who were voting Blue, then I’d be all-in. I’d call in sick on November 6th, and play pretend-Uberdriver. Unfortunately, where I live I’m afraid I’d just be picking up Rafael Cruz voters and helping them get to the polls.
Any idea how else I can help? I suppose I could donate $20 to Beto’s coffers and hope that helps me sleep better at night. I’m not a very constantly-political “Facebook-poster” because as I get older I’d like to keep the friends I do have, rather than alienate them into oblivion. So I’m afraid that trying to “change people’s minds” through that route is a no-go.
At this point I feel like I’m just gonna drink a lot of beers, fall asleep on the couch on that chilly November night, and hope maybe I catch lightning in a bottle come Wednesday morning. Hmmm, probably like the Trump people felt back in 2016?
Contact the campaign volunteer organizer if you want to help. They know what they need in your area better than anyone here.
Here’s what I would do in your circumstances: Find Beto’s campaign headquarters in your area and call them up. They will know best how you can help. They’ll give you a variety of tasks to choose from, maybe make calls, hand write letters, distribute fliers, go walkabout door-to-door – whatever you’re comfortable doing. Pick one or two things and do them. 
And give him that $20. If nothing else, it forces the other side to spend their resources to keep up. Republicans are already having to pick and choose which races they’ll support and which to let go glub-glub. Make 'em spend till it hurts.
Holy crap, thank you! I just Googled “{my county} county campaign volunteer opportunities” and I think I found what I’m looking for - thanks!
And Aspenglow, thank you for the response as well - I’m horrible at double-quoting multiple replies on here, but thank you - you and CarnalK both helped me out a ton!
ETA: Just gave $25 “to the cause”, so fingers crossed.
Well done, Win Place Show. Good luck to you – and thanks for making a difference! This really is the election where it matters more than ever before.
Remember, Win Place Show, the Senate race does not depend on what county you are in, it is a popular vote total: any little bit of action you can get going for Beto in your area will add to his total, even if most of the area votes for The Lizard.
You all have me geared up now - in the email receipt I got from my donation, under the “Thank you” part, there’s a note that’s right in my wheelhouse:
join **Drinking Liberally {my town} **this Wednesday 10/10 and every 2nd Wednesday at 6:30 PM at the {pub right down the road, that I’ve always thought of trying, but never had a reason to} Pub, TX 7xxxx #bluewave
This can be my “something to look forward to” that only seems to come around every other month or so. Thank you guys again for the lead!
I’m glad you found an event, I’m sure they’ll have lots of ways you can help out, and any little bit helps. I know you’re in a Trump county, but there are definitely other Beto supporters there. If you want to donate a little more, you could buy a Beto for Texas shirt and wear it around, a few people have struck up conversations with me about it and I convinced them that they should vote for Beto. Of course I live in Houston and feel pretty safe walking around with it, if you think you’d get hassled too much where you are then don’t feel compelled to do that.
I also recently found out about Vote Forward, which has addresses of infrequent Democratic voters and gets volunteers to write letters to them to encourage them to vote. You don’t have to write the letters from scratch, they give you a form and you fill out a sentence on why this is important to you and sign it. The goal of Vote Forward is to flip the House, but they have several Texas House districts in their list, so if you choose one of those and are writing to voters in District 02 and asking them to go vote, they are more likely to go out and vote for Beto instead of Cruz.
I’m trying to be optimistic about Beto’s chances, but also trying not to get my hopes too high just in case. But even if he does lose, I think he’ll lead to a higher voter turnout for Democrats, which means that some local and House races will flip to Democrat. And that maybe future candidates can build on the energy he’s produced for future races. So no matter what happens, no time or money that you spend helping out will be a waste.
The CBS YouGov poll I’ve been waiting for has finally come out. Cruz +6, 50-44, with 2 for some third party and 4 undecided. Poll was conducted between the 2nd and 5th of October, so after most of the Kavanaugh hearings, but before cloture and confirmation.
Closer than I would think Cruz is comfortable with. Kavanaugh is heavily mentioned in the polling questions at the linked .pdf. Scanning the .pdf, the sampled voters look very decided, and very polarized on the issues.
An interesting and disappointing poll.
The hope for O’Rourke has always been that there is more enthusiasm on the D side than on the R one this midterms, as seen in special election results. This poll shows no enthusiasm gap favoring the Ds and in fact more Rs are “very enthusiastic” than are Ds. Now his hope has to be that this result represents a mere blip of re-energized R enthusiasm in the face of the Kavanaugh circling of the wagons but that it drops back down quickly. Not much time for that but modern attention spans are very short.