Although much of the mainstream media such as The New York Times and CNN has recently gone ga-ga over the candidacy of Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke (D) who currently is running for the U.S. Senate from that state, Vox wasn't quite so kind in analyzing how he did in Tuesday's Democrat primary. In fact they called him a "Loser (sort of)" since he underperformed despite running against nonentities in his primary.
Vox's loser label for O'Rourke came in their politics reporter's, Andrew Prokop's, assessment of the Texas primary election:
Loser (sort of): Beto O’Rourke
It’s true that Rep. Beto O’Rourke — Democrats’ great hope for taking on Ted Cruz in Texas’s Senate race this fall — had never run for statewide office before. From that perspective, clinching the nomination and avoiding a runoff with about 61.8 percent of the vote (at press time) isn’t so bad.
Yet O’Rourke has received a tremendous amount of hype, gotten fawning national press, and faced no opponents who got any significant amount of attention in the primary. Considering that, the fact that more than a third of Democratic voters opted for relative unknowns rather than backing him seems a bit disappointing.
Now O’Rourke will face a tough road ahead in a state that’s getting more purple but may not be quite there yet. And there may be some more skepticism about his chances after Tuesday’s results than there was beforehand. Happily for O’Rourke, it’s not really that big a deal. He has the nomination anyway, and could well prove the doubters wrong when he has a real opponent — Cruz — to run against.
One reason for O'Rourke's less than impressive election outcome might be his extremely foul mouth on the campaign trail that could be the result of channeling his inner punk rocker, one of his careers before entering politics. Here is a compendium of profane public outbursts from O'Rourke that might not have gone over well with Texas voters (strong language alert).
Another Tuesday Texas primary loser unmentioned by Prokop was Democratic hype about how much they were going to overwhelm the Republicans in terms of number of primary voters. The painful reality for Democrats came last night in the form of this tweet from Nate Cohn:
GOP edge now at about 22 points, 61 to 39 percent. Dems should gain back some ground, but I suspect this won't prove to be the night they were imagining. None of their top candidates are posting great numbers. And this doesn't look like the vote of a 'blue' Texas
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) March 7, 2018
Don't count your chickens until...well, you know the rest.
