Some of you are majorly underestimating just how terrible Texas is on someone as kumbaya as Beto and how wholly unphased they are by the sliminess of Cruz.
1.) Pretty sure Beto would get all the disgruntled “Bernie Bro” voters that voted for Trump last time.
2.) There’s no such thing as a sure “lock” on toss up states. But as a Texan, who’s had a front row seat watching this whole Beto phenomenon go down in a deeply red state, I can’t think of anyone better to take on Trump than him.
But is it representative of the country as a whole? Beto was a charismatic candidate who had big rallies, brought a lot of new voters to the polls, was running against an almost universally disliked candidate, and had the anti-Trump momentum behind him. If that wasn’t enough to push through the red wall, what will be? What would be different in any similarly red part of the country? No doubt Beto would retain every blue vote, but how many red votes would switch?
Seems to me that if Democrats are interested in test driving Beto nationally, have him deliver the SOTU response in a few months. Very few people have ever done that well. If he shines, then at least the speechifying and visual part of his candidacy are viable if not the substance yet.
I’m saying I don’t think it is representative of the country as a whole. You’re right about Cruz being almost universally disliked. Texas has always liked him. They like him more than Trump, and they love Trump.
If he ran, he could get the anti Trump vote AND the anti Cruz vote from the slightly more sane republicans that wanted to see Cruz fail in Texas, to really stick it to him. Now he’s got name recognition, specifically as the enemy of their enemy.
Look at it this way. There was every expectation Cruz would win virtually unchallenged here in Texas. Cruz may be unliked across the country, but he’s a fucking rock star in Texas.
The fact that Beto got as close as he did is quite remarkable. Any other Dem candidate would have gotten 20% of the vote at most.
I am not even sure that Raphael is almost “universally” disliked. Yes, Al Franken did say something like, “I like him better than any other Senator does, and I hate Ted Cruz.” But that is just the Senate. Most Americans do not have to work with him, so their feelings are somewhat diluted. He is certainly reviled by more than a third of the country, but I am not so confident about the remainder.
But didn’t Beto benefit by going against someone like Cruz who was personally detested by people across the political spectrum? If O’Rourke had run against someone who wasn’t so obnoxious, he probably would’ve been spanked as badly as Wendy Davis was in her gubernatorial run a few years ago.
As for the ongoing prediction that Texas is politically turning purple, I’m still not convinced. Maybe a Democrat will finally break the GOP’s dominance in state-wide races in another 20 years or so.
In a fixed election where if you voted the Straight Democratic ticket- your vote went to Cruz. Which the GOP state bosses knew full well was happening and didnt lift a finger to fix.
Trump beat Cruz. Cruz beat O’Roarke. If it cost $70M to lose to Cruz, how much will it cost to beat Trump? This isn’t going to be some 2016 deal where Trump spends half the money as his opponent and still wins. He’s been unofficially campaigning since he took office and is going to have a shit-ton of money by 2020.
Again, Cruz is NOT disliked in Texas. Texans LOVE him. That was an uphill Beto had to fight.
Yes, but Rafael did have the economic advantage. Texas seems to be fairly economically stable right now, which is why Abbott also did well. But the country is on the thinning surface of a bubble, which is almost exactly like the one of a dozen years ago. California is starting to show signs of real estate price stresses. By the end of next year, we will probably be in a major national economic setback, which will not favor the Rs in the 2020 election, because they only know how to make things worse.
He isn’t as disliked as he is in the rest of the country, but I suspect that had Beto been running against John Cornyn that the race would have never even been close.
Wrong. Most Texans don’t even know who their other senator is. Cruz is WAY more popular here.
I think Cruz is more of the either you love him or hate him type, who is just as likely to inspire people to vote against him as he is to vote for him. Cornyn, as you say, is a lot closer to the proverbial “generic Republican” who wouldn’t have inspired people to vote against him.
I do, however, agree with this, again with the proviso that I think Beto would do better against Cruz than he would against Trump. Either way, however, I think Beto would probably win. Now it’s just a matter of convincing him to run.
I believe you have it backwards. What Beto was able to do was convince people who previously thought Cruz was great, to think otherwise. He was also able to get the endorsements of The Dallas Morning News and The Houston Chronicle. The HC previously endorsed Cruz.
I admit it could be sample error, but my liberal friends dislike Cruz a lot more than Cornyn.
I was thinking that Obama/Romney in 2012 might be a similar set of candidates to Beto/Cruz. So looking at the Texas results we have:
2012: Obama 41% Romney 57
2018: Beto 48% Cruz 51
I’m not sure how relevant that is, but it does seem like Beto made a significant dent.
Really just no.
First - in 2012, a pretty neutral year in terms of national D/R lean Sadler got 41% of the vote against Cruz. Yeah, Cruz’s margin was 16% but Sadler? And in a neutral year nationally. He just matched the lean of Texas for the top of the ticket. Against a no one.
Texans LOVE Cruz? Early polls were more like this Quinnipiac one - a 49 - 38 percent favorability rating. Yeah that is okay at +11, but still less than half rating him as favorable. LOVE that aint.
Let’s be very clear- the average for House candidates was just about the same as it was for O’Rourke. Per 538 “Democrats lost the popular vote for the House by only 3.6 percentage points” in Texas, not much different than O"Rourke’s margin. Think that was Beto coattails? Nah. These voters know how to split: they went to Abbot(R) for governor by more than 13%.
Cruz, after his slap down by Trump and weak sauce convention speech, was weaker in 2016 than in 2012 by far. By polling evidence, he is NOT so loved in Texas. The national D/R vote balance shifted by roughly 8. The demographics in Texas have shifted more since 2012 (and are set to shift farther) with more of the voter eligible population being both not white and younger than before. O’Rourke was not a sacrificial no name candidate and was extremely well funded. Those add up to a least another 5 points of that 16 Cruz won by in 2012.
Any decent candidate funded as well as and given as much free media as O’Rourke was should have been able to come in within 3 too.
This was not an especially impressive performance and saying that anyone else would have gotten 20% or less is simply silly.