Beto O’Rourke by DonkeyHotey, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

While Beto O’Rourke is obviously not going anywhere as a presidential candidate, in fact, each appearance he makes leaves him somewhat diminished. How many people have actually picked up on Beto’s bizarre claim this weekend that President Trump was responsible for the El Paso shooting? No one of significance. As his melts away as a presidential candidate, there is a growing clamor for Beto to abandon the presidential race and make another run at the Texas senator seat.

With so many Texas GOPrs dropping out of 2020 race, all eyes need to go to @BetoORourke. If he ran against Cornyn – win or lose, he would have coattails in TX and potentially flip lots of the state. It is not his year for President. But it can be his year to upend Texas politics.

— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) August 2, 2019

This would be a great time for him to switch gears and snatch a Senate seat from an old racist like Cornyn. https://t.co/tfYVw4c2aG

— Maggie Daytona, regular human (@maggieserota) August 4, 2019

The reason they are doing this is that they invested a lot of personal capital, though anyone who outs themselves watching anime tentacle porn doesn’t have very much to begin with. If Beto gets beaten like a rented mule in the primary, his political career is over. If he goes off to Texas and runs against John Cornyn, then they can point to Brave Sir Beto’s feisty nature. As Mr. Tentacle Porn says, his very presence, the very essence of Beto, in the race will bring voters out of the woodwork.

Charitably, this is horsesh**.

John Cornyn is a fairly well-liked political figure in Texas. Ted Cruz is…umm…polarizing. At identical points in the election cycle, Cornyn is

Strongly approve–14
Approve–23
Meh–17
Strongly disapprove–11
Disapprove–23
Who dis–12

He’s won his last two elections by 28 (2014) and 12 (2008) points.

Contrast with Ted Cruz.

Strongly approve–21
Approve–18
Meh–13
Strongly disapprove–33
Disapprove–8
Who dis–7

The people who disliked Cruz, really, really disliked him. And there were a lot of those. Cruz was underwater in favorability. He won his first election by 4 points. And he still beat Beto by 2 in an off-year election.

This is how the Star-Telegram describes the possibility:

But here’s a reality check: The idea that O’Rourke could defeat Cornyn in Texas in a presidential election year is preposterous.

He raised a historic $80 million dollars for the race against Cruz, aided by the influx of Hollywood celebrities endorsing him — and he still lost.

O’Rourke will simply not be able to replicate this level of funding or the advantageous political environment from the last cycle.

Cornyn has the benefit of having watched the Cruz-O’Rourke race closely. He will not be caught off guard. To Cornyn’s credit, he already has a massive fundraising war chest of more than $7 million.

History is also on his side: Cornyn has won five statewide races in Texas and has never lost a campaign.

Unlike Cruz’s position, Cornyn also enjoys high favorable numbers in Texas, with recent polling showing 44 percent of voters see him favorably, while 33 percent do not. Meanwhile, 40 percent view Beto very unfavorably, with only 22 percent viewing him very favorably.

Plus he will be running in a presidential election year so he can’t rely on complacent Republicans to stay home.

Personally, I’d love to see him run against Cornyn. He’d certainly pull a lot of money and attention away from the Democrat and he’ll get his clock cleaned in November.

I’m sorry to break the news to these people but their child-god, Beto, is pretty much finished as a political force. His best chance was against Ted Cruz. He blew that. He has no chance to win the presidential nomination and less of beating Cornyn. He’ll stagger along crippled for another election or two but O’Rourke is finished on the national stage.