The Big Lie, Con't

I will say this until I'm blue in the face, but if Trump election deniers win these secretary of state, attorney general and gubernatorial races races in 2022, they will absolutely wholesale nullify Democratic wins in 2024, full stop.

The Republican nominee for secretary of state in Arizona is a self-proclaimed member of the far-right extremist group the Oath Keepers who repeatedly shared anti-government conspiracies and posts about stockpiling ammunition on social media. 

CNN's KFile team uncovered previously unreported posts from Mark Finchem, an Arizona state representative who won his party's nomination with the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, on several social media websites linked from his since-deleted former Twitter account. 

The posts included a Pinterest account with a "Treason Watch List," and pins of photos of Barack Obama alongside imagery of a man clad in Nazi attire making a Nazi salute; Finchem also shared photos of the Holocaust claiming it could happen in the United States. 

The Oath Keepers, of which Finchem self-identified as a member since 2014, is an anti-government, far-right militia composed of former and active military and law enforcement that purports to defend the US Constitution. The group is perhaps best known for providing security for the January 6, 2021, "Stop the Steal" rally preceding the Capitol riot. Eleven members, including its leader, were charged by the Justice Department with "seditious conspiracy" related to the Capitol attack. 

Finchem, who attended the January 6 rally before the attack on the US Capitol but has denied he participated in the riot and has not been charged with any crimes, campaigned extensively on the false claim the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. If Finchem wins his race against Democrat Adrian Fontes, a former county clerk of Maricopa County, Arizona, Finchem would be tasked with running the state's elections in 2024. In Arizona, the secretary of state is second in line to the governorship. 

Finchem said CNN is not credible and declined to comment.

 

I still believe that in states where these jackasses already control the government, like Texas, there's a good chance that if a Democrat wins anything but the most gerrymandered races, they'll simply be annulled and awarded to the Republican. Beto O'Rourke, for example, will never be allowed to win, even if he does win. He'll be accused of massive voter fraud, the seat will be awarded to Ted Cruz, and Cruz will smile and nod and lie and gladly take it.

Watch.

Abbott, Elementary Con't

First-term Texas GOP governor Greg Abbott, busy reducing women to second-class citizens, running a third-world power grid, covering up for a fourth-grade police force, giving kids a fifth-rate education and with his sixth sense on immigration an absolute failure, is all shaping up to give Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke a seventh heaven of a chance in November.

One of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The revival of a 1920s ban on abortion. The country’s worst episode of migrant death in recent memory. And an electrical grid, which failed during bitter cold, now straining under soaring heat.

The unrelenting succession of death and difficulty facing Texans over the last two months has soured them on the direction of the state, hurting Gov. Greg Abbott and making the race for governor perhaps the most competitive since Democrats last held that office in the 1990s.

Polls have shown a tightening, single-digit contest between Mr. Abbott, the two-term incumbent, and his ubiquitous Democratic challenger, the former congressman Beto O’Rourke. Mr. O’Rourke is now raising more campaign cash than Mr. Abbott — $27.6 million to $24.9 million in the last filing — in a race that is likely to be among the most expensive of 2022.

Suddenly, improbably, perhaps unwisely, Texas Democrats are again daring to think — as they have in many recent election years — that maybe this could be the year.

“It seems like some the worst things that are happening in this country have their roots in Texas,” said James Talarico, a Democratic state representative from north of Austin. “We’re seeing a renewed fighting spirit.”

At the same time, the winds of national discontent are whipping hard in the other direction, against Democrats. Texans, like many Americans, have felt the strain of rising inflation and have a low opinion of President Biden. Unlike four years ago, when Mr. O’Rourke challenged Senator Ted Cruz and nearly won during a midterm referendum on President Donald J. Trump that lifted Democrats, now it is Republicans who are animated by animus toward the White House and poised to make gains in state races.

But in recent weeks there has been a perceptible shift in Texas, as registered in several public polls and some internal campaign surveys, after the school shooting in Uvalde that killed 19 children and two teachers and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that brought back into force a 1925 law banning all abortions except when the woman’s life is at risk.

“Dobbs at the margins has hurt Republicans in Texas. Uvalde at the margins has hurt Republicans in Texas. The grid has hurt Republicans in Texas,” said Mark P. Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University who helped conduct one recent poll. “Biden and inflation have been their saving grace.”

Most voters polled did not rank guns or abortion among their top issues in the recent survey, by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, but many of Mr. O’Rourke’s supporters did, suggesting the issues could help to energize his voters, Mr. Jones said.

And the issue of gun control was a top concern among another group that Republicans have been fighting hard to win away from Democrats: Hispanic women.

A separate poll, conducted by the University of Texas at Austin and released this month, showed 59 percent of respondents thought Texas was on the “wrong track,” the highest number in more than a decade of asking that question. Another, from Quinnipiac University, found Mr. O’Rourke within 5 percentage points of the governor.

 

I think Abbott has fouled up so badly that Beto has a real chance, and I think this race is only going to get closer.

 

We'll see.

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Another Hat Leaves The Ring, Con't

Beto O'Rourke is out, the the surprise of precisely nobody.

Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke dropped out of the 2020 presidential race on Friday after a disappointing campaign that failed to build off the momentum generated from his longshot Texas Senate run.

"Though today we are suspending this campaign, let us each continue our commitment to the country in whatever capacity we can," he wrote in an email to supporters.

Lagging in the polls and with fundraising, O'Rourke had yet to qualify for the Nov. 20 debate sponsored by MSNBC and The Washington Post.

O'Rourke's Iowa state director Norm Strzenbach told NBC News he he did not know the campaign would be ending Friday and in fact the campaign had just announced a big push in the first-in-the-nation voting state.

President Donald Trump quickly mocked O'Rourke on Twitter.

O’Rourke, who represented El Paso in Congress, entered the race as one of the most talked-about candidates following his narrow loss to Sen. Ted Cruz in deeply conservative Texas in 2018. After that defeat, Democratic activists in states that hold early presidential voting contests, including Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina, formed "Draft Beto" groups, which raised money and tried to line up supporters for a potential 2020 bid.

Despite the initial jolt of interest from voters and the media, his campaign failed to find footing following debate performances that were highly critiqued and consistent struggles to crack double digits in polls.

O'Rourke repeatedly rejected pleas — including from The Houston Chronicle's editorial board — for him to drop out of the presidential race and run again for the Senate in Texas against Sen. John Cornyn. His aides have said he does not intend to run for the Senate.

Beto I'm sure will have no problem keeping his House district for another term or two, but it'll be 2024 before he gets a second shot at Ted Cruz's seat.  By then, he might be able to win.   WHat I'm mad about is him wasting everyone's time with a quixotic 2020 run for the WHite House when he could have tried for Sen. John Cornyn's seat instead.

But you know what?  There's an even better Democrat running for Cornyn's seat, and that's MJ Hegar.

Still, Beto will continue to be a much-needed voice in the House.  If that's all he chooses to be, that's still a bonus for Democrats as long as he can do the job.

Last Call For The Also-Rans

As I noted earlier today, former Colorado Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper had the grace to step out of the 2020 Presidential contest to run for Senate, but he won't have an easy time in the primary.

Former presidential candidate John Hickenlooper is considering a Senate run.

In his announcement declaring he is dropping out of the presidential race, Hickenlooper said he'll "give some serious thought" to running for Senate. A decision could take weeks.

More than 10 Democrats are already hoping to challenge Sen. Cory Gardner in 2020.

On Thursday, several candidates announced they would not drop out should Hickenlooper join the race.

"This won't be a coronation," State Sen. Angela Williams, a current Senate candidate, said.

Senate candidate Mike Johnston also implied he is staying in the race.

“I am so grateful for the support we have received from people in places across the state, am energized by the campaign that lies ahead, and excited to win back control of the Senate and get to work for the people of Colorado," Johnston said in a statement.

Andrew Romanoff also told FOX31 he won't drop out.

"I'm running for Senate -- I intend to stay in this race -- because I'm running to get things done," Romanoff said.

Alice Madden also announced she would not drop out.

Beto O'Rourke on the other hand has no plans for running for the Senate in Texas, despite his near zero numbers in the polls.

Beto O'Rourke returned to the campaign trail Thursday with a speech in his hometown of El Paso. The former Texas congressman, who had effectively suspended his campaign after the mass shooting in El Paso earlier this month, laid out a new approach to his candidacy. He said that instead of prioritizing early-voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire, he would instead concentrate on communities where President Trump has been "terrorizing, and terrifying and demeaning our fellow Americans."

"As we head back on the campaign trail today, I know there is a way to do this better. And that came to me last week someone asked if I was going to be heading back to Iowa to go to the Iowa State Fair," O'Rourke, who has repeatedly accused the president of racism in recent weeks, said. "And I said, 'No, I can't go back for that, but I also can't go back to that.'"

During the speech, O'Rourke also announced plans to immediately visit Mississippi in the wake of the ICE raids that detained 680 people last week. O'Rourke also said he would travel to Arkansas, where he will keynote the Arkansas Democratic Party's Third Annual Clinton Dinner.

I'm really kid of hoping Hickenlooper loses the primary and Republican Sen. Cory Gardner then loses in November to whoever beats Hickenlooper, just so we can go "I told you so" to both these jackasses.

You should have run for the Senate from the beginning.

The Summer Of Hell

Will Bunch is right. Donald Trump's America is hell.  It's his fault we're here.  We're in hell, and it's time to escape.

Researchers went back and looked at the counties where Trump held his 2016 campaign rallies and found those jurisdictions posted a stunning 226 percent rise in hate crimes. That paper didn’t include El Paso, which was targeted in 2019 by both the Trump campaign and a mass killer. Or Southern Ohio, where the president held a rally on Thursday. Just last week, an FBI memo said fringe conspiracy theories are becoming a domestic terrorism threat — a warning that came to life with a series of pops on Saturday morning. Now, what are we going to do about it?

“He [Trump] is a racist, and he stokes racism in this country,” said El Paso’s Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman and current 2020 presidential candidate. “It fundamentally changes the character of this country, and it leads to violence.” O’Rourke’s words were a moment of moral clarity that America so desperately needs right now. We just need a lot more.

Our intolerable state of affairs screams out for a crisis footing. We need Mitch McConnell to stop tweeting platitudinous baloney and call the Senate back from its summer recess and act on legislation that prevents gunmen from hunting human beings with weapons of warfare — a ban on military-style weapons that can kill or maim a person every second and the high-capacity magazines that feed them. If McConnell and the GOP leadership won’t hold that vote — and they won’t — then Democrats need to shut down Capitol Hill until it happens. There cannot be business as usual.

Last night, a meeting of the remarkable activists from Moms Demand Action —- the preeminent anti-gun-violence group right now — was taking place in Washington, D.C., and as news poured in from El Paso, they swarmed the White House for a candlelight (and iPhone-light) protest at White House that was powerful and profound. We should join them. All of us. People in Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, and elsewhere have taken greater risks to protest behavior that — while undeniable outrageous — arguably is nowhere near as bad as what the 45th president is perpetrating.

But the real moment of clarity as the sun rises over El Paso and Dayton is that President Trump urgently needs to resign or be impeached. Already, 120 House members have signed onto impeachment. But while the frequently cited Mueller report does lay out serious high crimes and misdemeanors, the real reason for impeachment should be Trump’s incitements to violence — which experts call stochastic terrorism — and his appeals to racism.

A president choosing to use the bully pulpit of his office to embrace racism — with the naked political goal of his own re-election — and now inspire mass murderers is the greatest abuse of American power in my lifetime, worse than the crimes of Richard Nixon’s Watergate. This is exactly why the Founders baked impeachment into the Constitution, and it’s why the 2020 election may be too long for us to wait. If things are intolerable now — and they are — take a moment to ponder how much worse things can get over the next 15 months if we continue to do nothing.

 The man has a point.

A very, very good one.

Beto O'Rourke, to his credit, has an even better one.



He gets points for saying what others will not, that's for sure.

Last Call For Trump Street

Wall Street corporate Democratic donors are horrified at this year's crop of presidential candidates, and apparently if Dems don't lay off the "Socialism" soon, those billions are going to just have to go to Trump for a second term.

One night in early April, roughly 20 of the Democratic Party’s highest-profile donors from the financial industry sat down over dinner to discuss how exactly they were feeling about the 2020 presidential race. For the most part, it wasn’t great.

Convened by two veterans of liberal fund-raising — investors Steven Rattner and Blair Effron — the group had no hard-and-fast agenda except to share notes on the overflowing field of candidates. The crowd of Democratic heavyweights, including Clinton-administration Treasury secretary and Goldman Sachs and Citi alum Robert Rubin, former ambassador to France Jane Hartley, and venture capitalist Deven Parekh, knew most of the contenders well. But coming to some kind of consensus, picking a plausible candidate they felt they could all live with and throw their considerable money behind — that was a far-fetched proposition.
“There’s tremendous fear,” said one banker who was there. The candidates who had long cultivated relationships with Wall Street — such as Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand — were struggling to gain traction and had grown more hostile to finance as their party had, too. Joe Biden, leading in early polls, had a comforting history in the Obama White House and a reputation as an Establishment Democrat but had never, until a few months ago, maintained any meaningful relationship with Wall Street, hadn’t even announced his candidacy yet, and struck many bankers as a dubious bet to beat Donald Trump. Nearly everyone else in the field, the financiers felt, was being pulled leftward by Bernie Sanders (the preposterously well-funded contender they considered too crazy to even imagine in the White House) and Elizabeth Warren (less crazy, Democrats on Wall Street think, and way more competent). “She would torture them,” one banker told me. “Warren strikes fear in their hearts,” explained a New York executive close to banking leaders from both parties — so much fear that such investors often speak of the U.S. senator from Massachusetts, a former law professor and consumer advocate, as a co-front-runner with Sanders. “How do we come up with an alternative?” asked one person at the dinner.

There were a few options, none perfect. Beto O’Rourke had recently launched his campaign, and his congressional record was essentially a centrist-shaped blank slate. Pete Buttigieg was a McKinsey alum who came from the Rust Belt but talked like a Silicon Valley exec or an Obama Treasury official, but no one, yet, took him seriously.

Kamala Harris was a favorite of many in the room. The U.S. senator from California now describes herself as a populist and highlighted a past confrontation with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon over foreclosures in her pre-campaign book, but in 2012, as California’s attorney general, she passed on prosecuting OneWest and its CEO, Steven Mnuchin. In this cycle, she has been the Democrat perhaps most active in seeking Wall Street money (Citi vice-chairman Ray McGuire and Pine Street partner Brian Mathis are helping with her Wall Street outreach, and she recently headlined a fund-raiser hosted by LionTree CEO Aryeh Bourkoff) and occasionally its advice (BlackRock’s Michael Pyle, an Obama-administration alum, is advising her on economics). “People are generally in search of a candidate who has the right set of views, has the right character, but also can win,” Rattner told me later. “Right now, it is very hard to see who checks all three boxes.”

There was no agreement. By evening’s end, multiple donors walked away planning to write checks to three or four or five candidates — hoping they stay relatively moderate — rather than going all in on any one. Among the committed Democrats on Wall Street, this wait-and-see, as-long-as-it’s-not-Bernie-or-Elizabeth posture has become the norm. “This is like venture investing. You really don’t know who’s going to break out, but your hope is you have a good portfolio and that one of these investments breaks out,” Bruce Heyman, a former Goldman managing director and ambassador to Canada, told me.

Of course, these longtime donors are more committed to the Democrats than the average guy on Wall Street. Two years ago, Trump seemed noxious enough that Democrats (reasonably) hoped to continue growing their considerable advantage over Republicans in the New York finance set. But one GOP-driven tax cut and one leftward shift in the Democratic Party later, a worried handful of bankers is considering turning that story on its head. “They’re too far left! They’re too far left!” said Alex Sanchez, CEO of the Florida Bankers Association. “I mean, honestly, if it’s Bernie versus Trump, I have no fucking idea what I’m going to do,” one Democratic hedge funder told me. “Maybe I won’t vote.”

Democratic donors aren’t especially worried about policy; few have sussed out where candidates stand on Dodd-Frank or the carried-interest tax loophole, and few believe that, aside from Sanders or Warren, any contenders are likely to make an aggressive new push for regulation as president. What agitates them instead is — in a replay of the alienation they felt during the Obama presidency thanks to a few stray “fat cats” comments — how Democratic rhetoric threatens their sense of status. No moment crystallized the new reality more than when former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper — a centrist candidate who was a prominent business owner in Denver before entering politics — refused to even call himself a capitalist in a Morning Joe interview in March.

Before Trump won, Hillary Clinton had outraised him by a margin of more than four to one among the financial crowd, which had long regarded him as a pariah because of his shady record and bankruptcies. Now? “The anti-corporate, anti–Wall Street direction of the Democratic Party is driving Democrats into the Trump camp, which is, in most cases, the last place they want to be,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, the business group that counts among its members all of the city’s major financial institutions. “The fact that he’s raised as much money as he has is a reflection of how many Democrats are holding their nose and supporting him because they feel demonized by the Democrats.” In mid-April, Trump’s team revealed it had raised over $30 million in the first quarter of 2019, slightly more than the top two Democratic candidates combined. If you add up all the Democrats’ dollars, the challengers are way ahead — but among donors, and indeed among the candidates themselves, the perception remains that the president is accumulating a real edge. Meanwhile, Goldman released its 2020 outlook: Trump, the firm concluded, now has a “narrow advantage.” Even Paul Singer, the GOP hedge-fund magnate who backed efforts to defeat Trump in 2016 — and who funds the Washington Free Beacon, which first paid for the anti-Trump research that later became “the dossier” — stopped by a small Trump fund-raising roundtable in New York late last year. “Well, we must be doing well now that Paul’s here,” Trump said.

“Wall Street for Trump is the reverse Bradley effect,” said hedge-fund manager Anthony Scaramucci, the Republican fund-raiser who (very) briefly served as Trump’s White House communications director, referring to the theory that voters overstate their support for nonwhite candidates in polls. “They all secretly love him, but because of their clients and the polarity, they don’t want to say it out loud.”

Over coffee recently in midtown, an investment pro with a long history in Democratic politics described the struggle to resist the unexpected pull of Trump. “What matters more?” he asked, looking up at me. “My social values or my paycheck?”

This story makes Liz Warren look like the person Wall Street is most afraid of, and Harris the least.  That's very good for Warren in my book, not so good for Harris.

The real problem is Wall Street wants to keep him. 

Maybe we don't need Wall Street?

Just an idea, Dems.

Deportation Nation, Con't

Just a reminder that Trump regime refuses to process migrants crossing into the US and is keeping them in camps in order to create a border crisis and a humanitarian crisis that will of course require "extraordinary emergency measures" to resolve.

The nation’s top border official warned that the U.S. immigration enforcement system along the nation’s southern boundary is at “the breaking point” and said Wednesday that authorities are having to release migrants into the country after cursory background checks because of a crush of asylum-seeking families with children.

Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that for the first time in more than a decade, his agency is “reluctantly” performing direct releases of migrants, meaning they are not turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they are not detained, they are not given ankle bracelets to track their movements and they are allowed to leave with just a notice to appear in court at a later date.

He said that this is a “negative outcome” but that it is “the only current option we have” because of overcrowding at detention facilities as Central Americans stream to the border knowing they will be able to gain entry with asylum claims.

The number of migrant families coming to the border has reached new highs month after month, a trend that dramatically accelerated after President Trump announced parents and children would no longer be separated, reversing course on his “zero tolerance” crackdown.

McAleenan said the agency detained more than 4,100 migrants Tuesday, the highest one-day total at the border in more than a decade, and agency projections have border apprehensions on pace to exceed 100,000 this month — an increase of more than 30 percent. By comparison, at the height of the last border crisis, in May 2014, agents apprehended more than 68,800 migrants that month.

The massive influx of families seeking asylum has strained almost every aspect of U.S. operations on the border, McAleenan said, nowhere more evident than here, along the Rio Grande. Crossings have been overwhelmed with hundreds of migrants seeking asylum daily; Border Patrol stations are crammed and have no space for detainees; the immigration court system is backed up with hundreds of thousands of cases; and health services are having to triage batches of patients who have a variety of ailments and communicable diseases.

“That breaking point has arrived this week,” McAleenan said, standing in front of a border fence. “CBP is facing an unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis all along our southwest border, and nowhere has that crisis manifested more acutely than here in El Paso.” 

Again, everything here from Trump's false "end" the child separation to "reluctantly" releasing migrants without processing them is designed to visibly create a crisis, and if you don't believe me, note this is being done on purpose in El Paso.

Beto O' Rourke's congressional district.

Everything is calculated revenge, and Trump doesn't care how many human lives are destroyed in the process. And now, as I have told you for more than a year, Deportation Nation is almost here.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will ask Congress for the authority to deport unaccompanied migrant children more quickly, to hold families seeking asylum in detention until their cases are decided and to allow immigrants to apply for asylum from their home countries, according to a copy of the request obtained by NBC News.

In a letter to Congress, Nielsen said she will be seeking a legislative proposal in the coming days to address what she called the "root causes of the emergency" that has led to a spike in border crossings in recent weeks. The letter has not yet been sent.

The legislative proposal would have to clear the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, which is likely to respond with strong opposition.

The trap is simple: make Democrats vote on keeping migrant kids in cages versus mass deportations of migrant kids without their parents and blast them for whatever happens as 100% their fault.

While that won't be true, Democrats got maneuvered into this trap more than a year ago, and now it is closing around their necks.

Thousands of kids will suffer as a result.

Another Hat Lands In The Ring, Con't

The Democratic field for 2020 is only getting more crowded, not less, as March soldiers on, and as he's been hinting at for weeks now, Texas Congressman Beto O' Rourke is running for the White House.

Beto O'Rourke announced Thursday he is running for president, entering the 2020 race with a call for Americans to look past their differences in order to confront the challenges facing the country. 

"This is a defining moment of truth for this country and for every single one of us," the 46-year-old Democratic former congressman from Texas said in a video announcing his candidacy. "The challenges that we face right now, the interconnected crises in our economy, our democracy and our climate have never been greater." 

"They will either consume us, or they will afford us the greatest opportunity to unleash the genius of the United States of America," he added. 

O'Rourke, who is starting a three-day swing through eastern Iowa on Thursday, said he will hold a kick-off rally for his campaign in El Paso, Texas, on March 30. 

His entrance into the race is the culmination of his two-year, out-of-nowhere rise from a back-bench congressman largely unknown outside El Paso to Democratic stardom as a record-breaking fundraiser, the subject of an HBO documentary and the target of two separate efforts to draft him into the presidential campaign. He joins a crowded field of more than a dozen Democrats vying for the party's nomination. 

In his announcement video, O'Rourke said he would run a "positive campaign that seeks to bring out the very best from every single one of us, that seeks to unite a very divided country." 

"We saw the power of this in Texas, where people allowed no difference, however great or however small, to stand between them and divide us," O'Rourke said. 

O'Rourke last year lost that race in Texas, a bid to oust Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Still, the Senate race thrust O'Rourke, who served three terms in the House, into the national spotlight. He shattered fundraising records, ending with an $80 million haul, and finished less than 3 percentage points behind Cruz -- much closer than other Democrats had come in recent years against Republicans in a state that's long been a GOP stronghold. But a presidential bid will be a much different test for O'Rourke, who will face serious pressure from the left for the first time in his political career. 

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, O'Rourke said the 2020 campaign has "got to be about the big things that we hope to achieve and enact and do for one another." 

He said that "the most pressing, the most urgent, the most existential challenge of them all is climate. And the scientists, beyond a shadow of a doubt, know that we have at a maximum 12 years in order to enact significant change to meet that threat and reduce the consequences of the decisions that we made in the past -- the consequences that our kids and the generations that follow will bear."

"But he couldn't beat Ted Cruz in his home state" is a fair criticism of his campaign.  "He should be running against John Cornyn, but he'd almost certainly lose anyway" is less so, but still somewhat valid.

I just don't think there's a good reason for Beto to be in the race, given who's already there.  I don't honestly know what he brings to the table.  If he does win the primaries, then he'll prove me wrong and I'll support him 100%.

But that's what primaries are for, for candidates to make that case.  Initially, I'm not buying it.  The strongest case for Beto is that he could accelerate a Blue Texas scenario. Nate Cohn explains:

Mr. O’Rourke’s close result wasn’t because of an exceptional turnout that will be hard for other Democrats to repeat in 2020. Republican voters, defined as those who have participated in a recent Republican primary, turned out at a higher rate than Democratic ones. Neither the Hispanic nor youth voter share of the electorate was higher than it was in 2016, when President Trump won the state by nine points.

On the contrary, Democrats in 2020 can be expected to enjoy a more favorable turnout because presidential races tend to draw in more young and Hispanic voters. Mr. O’Rourke might have won Texas last November if turnout had been at the level of a contested presidential race, based on an Upshot analysis of Times/Siena poll responses, actual results and voter file data from L2, a nonpartisan voter file vendor.

The data yields an estimate of how every registered voter in Texas would have voted, based on a long list of geographic and demographic factors that predicted vote choice in the Times/Siena polling. Importantly, turnout in 2018 is among those factors, which allows us to fully untangle how much of Mr. O’Rourke’s strength was because of strong turnout among his supporters.

The data indicates that two opposing turnout trends influenced the results. The electorate was older, whiter and more Republican than the state as a whole — or than the 2016 electorate. But an O’Rourke supporter was generally likelier to vote than a demographically and politically similar supporter of Mr. Cruz. This was the pattern nationwide, so it is not obvious that this can be attributed to Mr. O’Rourke specifically; it could have been the favorable Democratic environment more generally.

Either way, the extra turnout boost probably cut Mr. Cruz’s margin of victory by two points.

Mr. O’Rourke might have won with a turnout of around 10 million voters. (The actual turnout was around 8.4 million.) Without the extra edge of a Democratic wave year, it might have taken 11 million votes, a number that is not out of the question in 2020 if Texas is contested as a battleground state.

In other words, Beto did well enough with white Texas midterm voters that if he got presidential year level turnout, he could win the state.  That could happen for a number of Democratic candidates, but if Beto can show he has a clear shot to beat Trump (which has to be an easier prospect than beating John Cornyn) then he can make a major tactical case as to why he should be the nominee.

Of course, he has to win primaries to do that.  And Josh Marshall makes the case that Beto is already done.

The problem I see for O’Rourke is that these endorsements and the tendency behind them makes him look – maybe accurately – like the presidential candidate of Democratic ‘centrists” – a very thin constituency in Democratic politics at the moment. This may sound like I’m saying the energy of the party is on the left and you’re out of luck if you’re playing to a constituency on the right-center. Not exactly. I think the power and pull of high profile left-wing members of Congress like Ocasio-Cortez and others are greatly exaggerated by their media profiles. As is usually the case, I suspect a successful candidacy will be one who has appeal and acceptability on the left of the party without being owned by it or being perceived as a factional candidate of the left. You may or may not agree with me on that point. But let’s leave that argument for another day. What I’m really quite certain about is that the Democratic nominee is not going to be the factional candidate of Democratic centrists. And the way the roll out played O’Rourke made a good start toward becoming that guy.

This isn’t the first time this has come out. During the Beto-mania that followed the November election a number of high-profile Sanders supporters scalded O’Rourke in a series of much-discussed opinion pieces. The aim was pretty clear: knock the new guy down several pegs to leave the road open for the Bernie millennium. Some of these attacks were downright dishonest or tendentious. Others more reasonably pointed out that for all the excitement about O’Rourke’s campaign against the odious and oleaginous Ted Cruz he actually has a pretty middle of the road voting record and even more than a few votes with Republicans. That spectacle showed the unloveliest parts of the sectarian left around Sanders. But Beto himself did a decent job today validating that critique and positioning himself in the contest in a way that will make winning the nomination a steep challenge.

This is also a fair point, and one that's probably far more applicable.  The "incrementalist centrist"is not going to be the nominee, and if Beto is headed for that slot, he's toast.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Beto O'Rourke has a real shot against Ted Cruz, and this is why. 

‘I can think of nothing more American.’ — Beto O'Rourke — the man taking on Ted Cruz — brilliantly explains why NFL players kneeling during the anthem is not disrespectful pic.twitter.com/bEqOAYpxEL

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 21, 2018

This is by far the best answer from a politician on exactly why NFL players kneeling is quintessentially an American sports movement, and Beto nails this.

“My short answer is no, I don't think it's disrespectful," O’Rourke said. "Here's my longer answer but I'm gonna try to make sure that I get this right because I think it's a really important question. And reasonable people can disagree on this issue. Let's begin there. And it makes them no less American to come down on a different conclusion on this issue, right?"

"Peaceful, non-violent protests, including taking a knee at a football game to point out that Black men, unarmed, Black teenagers, unarmed and Black children, unarmed, are being killed at a frightening level right now, including by members of law enforcement, without accountability, and without justice," he added. "And this problem – as grave as it is – is not gonna fix itself and they're frustrated, frankly, with people like me, and those in positions of public trust and power, who have been unable to resolve this or bring justice for what has been done and to stop it from continuing to happen in this country. And so non-violently, peacefully, while the eyes of this country are watching these games, they take a knee to bring our attention and our focus to this problem to ensure that we fix it. That is why they are doing it. And I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights, any time, anywhere, in any place.”

This man is going to go far, but he has to beat Ted Cruz in November.  GQ's Christopher Hooks profiles the race:

The day after Cruz's rally, O'Rourke is in Hutchins, a small town in Dallas County. Though he and Cruz are roughly the same age—45 and 47, respectively—O'Rourke looks and talks like a much newer model. The fervor that greets him verges on the messianic. (A state representative speaking at the event invoked Nelson Mandela.) He feels like a candidate tailored for the moment.

His campaign's product—what Beto offers—is an opportunity for dispirited Democrats to take part in something hopeful. But as Election Day has drawn closer, the tone has slowly shifted. It's gotten more urgent and a bit darker. Our country is in peril, he tells the crowd in Hutchins, and if there isn't a change in 2018, things could get worse: The “slip that we took in 2016, if unchecked in 2018, could become a slide,” he says, and “we could lose the things that have made us who we are for 242 years and counting.” Time is running out. “No pressure, folks. The entire fortune and future and fate of this country rests on our shoulders,” he says. O'Rourke calls the 2018 election the “moment of truth.” There is not the slightest bit of ironic distance here, and the crowd loves it. Somehow, it's cathartic.

Later that day, in the well-off suburb of Farmers Branch, over a thousand people pack a college gymnasium to hear O'Rourke speak, shutting out hundreds more. Even those unable to get into the rally are excited about the attendance. “Wonderful. Awesome,” one turned-away latecomer says. “It's so good that people are coming out.”

Standing in the shade with me near his campaign minivan after the event, O'Rourke acknowledges the tough road ahead—while noting that much good has already been done. His rallies, he says, are about something bigger than the current Senate race. “There's so many things going on right now that literally can't wait until the next election,” he says, still fired up just after having taken selfies with a line of hundreds.

Win or lose, the fervor brought about by the campaign could be leveraged on other issues, he says. “I feel that judgment of my kids and of history if we fail to do this. I mean, it is going to be on us. They won't say that Trump [alone is to blame], because they'll know that this is a democracy that all of us had a chance to participate in. They'll say, ‘Those pendejos in 2018, they were the ones who screwed this up.’ We can't screw this up.”

And God bless him, he's right.  O'Rourke is now within 4 points of Cruz and closing.

Let's help Beto seal the deal.  He gets it, guys.  He really does.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Don't look now, but Beto O'Rourke just might actually be able to beat Ted Cruz in November in Texas, and now we know O'Rourke already has got the money to do it.

U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso, raised over $6.7 million for his U.S. Senate bid in the first quarter of 2018, according to his campaign, a staggering number that poses a new category of threat to Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. 

The haul is easily O'Rourke's biggest fundraising quarter yet, more than double his next-closest total for a three-month period. It also is more than any Democratic Senate candidate nationwide took in last quarter, O'Rourke's campaign said. 

Cruz has not released his first-quarter fundraising numbers yet, but O'Rourke's $6.7 million total is on a different level than his previous hauls, which ranged from $1.7 million to $2.4 million. Those alone were good enough to outraise Cruz for three of the last four reporting periods. 

Furthermore, the $6.7 million total came from more than 141,000 contributions — another record-busting number for O'Rourke.

Ted Cruz has got to be terrified at this point.  He knows that he's in for the fight of his life, and he could actually lose.

"Campaigning in a grassroots fashion while raising more than $6.7 million from 141,000 contributions, we are the story of a campaign powered by people who are standing up to special interests, proving that we are more than a match and making it clear that Texans are willing to do exactly what our state and country need of us at this critical time," O'Rourke said in a statement.

O'Rourke's campaign released the fundraising statistics Tuesday morning ahead of the April 15 deadline to report it to the Federal Election Commission. Cruz has not offered any numbers for the full quarter, though he disclosed raising $803,000 through the first 45 days of the year — a fraction of O'Rourke's $2.3 million for the same timeframe. 

On Tuesday morning, O'Rourke's team did not volunteer its cash-on-hand figure, but the $6.7 million raised is likely to go a long way toward closing his deficit with Cruz in money to spend. As of mid-February, O'Rourke had $4.9 million in the bank to Cruz's $6 million. 

O'Rourke unveiled the $6.7 million figure on the second day of a three-day, 12-city trip by Cruz to mark the official start of his re-election campaign. O'Rourke is also hitting the road — he plans to hold town halls in 15 cities over the next six days.

At this point, Cruz's seat is in play.  It's something the Democrats absolutely need to win if they have any chance of taking the Senate in a year where they need two pickups while having to defend ten Trump state Senate seats, and again, tens of millions of dollars are going to be spent by the GOP to knock out Jon Tester, Heidi Heitkamp, Claire McCaskill, Joe Manchin, and Joe Donnelly.

But guess what?  Ted Cruz is far from the only big name Republican in trouble whose Democratic challenger is raising big bucks to take them on.

The top Democrat challenging Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) raised $2.1 million during the first quarter of 2018, his campaign announced on Monday. 

Randy Bryce’s campaign said it has raised $4.75 million since last June and has nearly $2.3 million in cash on hand. 

The campaign also said it added 45,000 new donors since the beginning of the year.

Bryce’s bid to unseat Ryan in Wisconsin's 1st District began last June with a fundraising campaign that netted more than $100,000 in its first 24 hours. 

The ironworker raised $1 million in the third quarter of 2017 and had raised approximately $2.7 million by the end of 2017, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Randy Bryce has a much tougher battle than O'Rourke does, if you can believe that a Democrat in Texas has a better shot of winning than a Wisconsin one.  But Paul Ryan is the most prolific fundraiser in DC.  He raised an obscene $44 million last year and gave most of it to the RNC.  He's fighting Bryce with his pocket change and leftovers, and that's still tens of million of dollars.

Randy's going to need your help too. 

It's great if they win, but it can't come at the expense of the seats we already have in hand.  If we can hold the line here, we can finish off the GOP in 2020 and 2022.  Let's make sure we can keep the seats we do have in the House and Senate.