On Tuesday night, Ted Cruz withstood Beto-mania and held onto his Senate seat in Texas. This was probably the most hyped race of the midterms: Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate, was the subject of boatloads of fawning profiles and amassed a truly staggering war chest. But Cruz still won.
So what happened?
The basic explanation is that the fundamentals were too much for O’Rourke. Texas is, despite its leftward step in 2016, a fundamentally red state. There are more Republicans than Democrats in the pool of likely voters. O’Rourke was able to push into GOP margins and perform better than an average Democrat by running a solid campaign and piggy-backing on Democratic anti-Trump energy. We don’t have a final margin in that race yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if O’Rourke ends up overperforming the “fundamentals” (i.e. what we’d expect if we knew the basic conditions of the race and almost nothing about the candidates themselves).
Some on the left have talked up O’Rourke as a 2020 presidential candidate. The basic idea is that his ability to raise funds andhis performance in Texas show that he’s a better candidate than a replacement-level Democrat.
I’m skeptical of this narrative. The strength of O’Rourke’s electability argument gets weaker as Cruz’s margin grows. And on some level I believe that a W is a W and that wins are important to the primary electorate. But most importantly, in 2020 liberals will have more options. In 2018, the left had three real stars – O’Rourke, Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams (two of which have already lost and one of whom is behind in the current vote count). So O’Rourke only had to compete for airtime, money and media attention with a couple of other candidates.
But in 2020, O’Rourke will have a lot more competition. Every Democrat and their uncle will believe that they can beat Trump in 2020, and many of them will run. O’Rourke will simply be competing for the limelight with more people. And that’s a big threat to Beto-mania Part Two.
