20 Dems for 2020: Could Beto O’Rourke Be More Than Just a YouTube Star?
Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) might have lost to Ted Cruz in the Texas Senate race, but it is a fact that he was America’s hottest new YouTube star in 2018. He worked extremely hard to get to the top of the influencer world and what that means for his chances to cross-over into the mainstream media and nab a starring role in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary is enormous.
Let’s review. Before running for Senate, Beto’s career was a big nothing. He was a beta Congressman on the Armed Forces and Veterans’ Affairs Committees, which are the equivalent of two big, fat Congressional participation ribbons. And his career as a YouTube influencer wasn’t going much better. His biggest hit was a series of videos he filmed with a neighboring Congressman, Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), while they carpooled from Texas to Washington, D.C., and passed the time making dumb jokes about bipartisanship and tumbleweeds. It was honestly like watching Carpool Karaoke get knocked-up by Rebecca Black’s “Friday” music video — which is to say, it was worse than a human sacrifice.
Fortunately, Beto caught a huge break when his Senate opponent, Ted Cruz, called him, “a Triple Meat Whataburger liberal who is out of touch with Texas values.” O’Rourke answered this attack by skateboarding in a Whataburger parking lot while his hype-man filmed him and awkwardly demanded that, “Everybody share this. Beto O’Rourke is on a skateboard in a Whataburger parking lot.” Bro, we get it. A picture’s worth 1,000 words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwizfmPNrH8
Anyway, this video loosened up some wallets but it didn’t launch Beto’s YouTube career into the mainstream. That happened a few days later when O’Rourke recorded a viral hit that put him on a rocketship to the top. He did this by answering a real zinger of a town hall question about whether or not you can support veterans and support Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the National Anthem at the same time.
Without missing a beat, Beto told a room full of pistol shooting Texans that, “I can think of nothing more American,” than NFL players using their First Amendment rights to take a knee.
This video turned into a white guilt gravity bomb that sucked the wallets right out of liberal America’s pants pockets. From that moment on, everyone who had ever eaten kale or bought yoga pants was obsessed with Betomania and flooded his campaign with cash. $78 million of it, to be exact. On top of that, Beto became a celebrity favorite. Check out what A-listers Lebron James and Beyonce Knowles were wearing before the election:
Suddenly, Beto was A-List too, but that wasn’t enough to beat Ted Cruz, who won the race in a screamer.
The result of Beto’s near-miss in Texas has been a two-month long argument between the MAGA robots at Fox News and the woke chatterboxes at CNN over whether Rep. O’Rourke is: (1) a contender for the White House; or (2) a YouTuber who lost a winnable race because of lousy strategic decision making.
To get to the bottom of that, let’s review some facts:
–Â Beto raised $78 million without taking money from corporations or PACs.
— Everyone hates Ted Cruz.
— Yet Ted Cruz still won by 15% and 1.3 million votes in his 2012 campaign.
— Donald Trump won Texas by 9% and 800,000 votes.
— Texas is rated R+8 by Cook Political.
— Beto ran a campaign that was more unapologetically liberal than a teach-in about non-gender binary group sex.
— Despite that, Beto only lost by 2.6-percentage points, or about 200,000 votes in TEXAS.
— In early Iowa polling, O’Rourke is running third behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, even though no one had even heard of him six months ago.
— Which also means that in early Iowa polling, O’Rourke is crushing Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) who have all basically been running for President for the last five years.
Speaking of Kamala Harris, what does The Kamala Harris 2020 Bullshit Baselineâ„¢ say about O’Rourke’s intentions?
☠Is this candidate campaigning in Iowa and/or New Hampshire. No. Because he was busy running a tight race in Texas this fall. However, CNBC has reported that Beto’s organization has had conversations with heavy hitters in these states.
☑ Is this candidate prioritizing his career over the party’s goals? Sort of. Beto famously raised $78 million of cash this cycle but refused to share it with fellow Democrats who needed a lifeline. He did have a competitive race to win though.
☑ Is this candidate raising boatloads of money? Did we mention that O’Rourke raised $78 million without taking money from PACs or corporations?
☠Is this candidate denying that he has interest in the job? Unclear. Beto has given a few different responses to this question. When asked by TMZ if he wanted to be President, Beto answered that, “I dreamed about being in the Beatles as a kid,” and not in the Oval Office. On another occasion, he told reporters that he and his wife “made a decision not to rule anything out.“
I am going to give Beto partial credit on #1 and #2 and score his bullshit as a 55% match with Senator Kamala Harris’s.
Despite this low score, I think all logic points towards Beto running for President. Here is why:
(1) Beto is unemployed as of January 3rd and he is a father of three. This bro needs a job and the only people hiring in El Paso are farmers and drug cartels. That is why I am expecting him to, “make his own job.”
(2) Some dummies think that Beto will run for Senate versus Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in 2020, instead of running for president. Yeah, right. Only if he’s a moron. Unlike Ted Cruz, people actually like John Cornyn and won’t come out of the woodwork to dump awful garbage on him. Also, Donald Trump will be on the ticket in 2020, which means that the lunatic vote that sat out the last election will be hitting the polls in full force. Beto won’t take the bait on this Senate race, because the odds of beating John Cornyn on-cycle versus Ted Cruz in a midterm are way worse.
(3) Beto is young. For him, there is a lot of upside to running for President, even if it’s a suicide mission. That’s because sandbagging a presidential campaign is a classic strategy to advance your career in other ways. For example, Beto could pull a Reagan ’68 or a Joe Biden ’88 and run for POTUS just to juice his name and build a national following. Or he could pull an Al Gore ’92 or a or John Huntsman ’12 and floss so hard on the campaign trail that the eventual winner will offer him a cabinet post or ambassadorship.
(4) If not now, when? Beto is a star right now but everyone in D.C. and Hollywood knows that fame is fleeting. Beto can either be the presidential casting couch in 2020, or he can get screwed on it if he waits more than one cycle to get back into the game.
So I am betting that in 2020, YouTube star Beto O’Rourke goes mainstream. He’s going to jump off your Instagram feed and into the network news, where we’ll see his face next to Lester Holt’s and maybe even get treated to an attack ad or two on Super Tuesday. If you live in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, or California, then get ready for Betomania to smash you in the face. I personally can’t wait to see him explain white privilege to some farmers in Dubuque.
This bro is going to run for President. Buy YES and crush it with him.
1 thought on “20 Dems for 2020: Could Beto O’Rourke Be More Than Just a YouTube Star?”