‘Pretty much toast’: Beto O’ Rourke faces his Alamo in Texas debate

Lt Col. William Travis and his troops were also in a perilous position in 1836 at the Alamo Mission in San Antonio. The 13-day siege there entered Texas legend as a symbol of heroism and refusal to admit defeat. It was a turning point in the state’s war of independence from Mexico. But all the defenders died.

O’Rourke, 46, desperately needs to build some momentum behind his White House bid as he struggles to surpass an average of 3% support in the polls.

“Welcome to our house,” O’Rourke’s team tweeted Thursday with a video of “Beto for America” yard signs in Houston, where the third Democratic National Committee-sanctioned debate will take place at Texas Southern University, a historically black college the former El Paso councilman’s visited before.

Jeff Hewitt, an Ohio-based Democratic consultant, believes O’Rourke’s “Remember the Alamo!” moment has passed.

“No, I don’t know of anything he can really do to vault himself into the top tier. I think he’s pretty much toast,” Hewitt said, describing him as “a walking wounded, running as a vanity project. He can only exist so long with the rate of spending that he has without raising significantly more money than he has on hand. Unless he just wants to drive around in his car for the whole cycle, stand on bar stools and, you know, be Beto.”

Former Democratic Kentucky congressman Mike Ward thinks O’Rourke “peaked on the day he announced,” though he suspects he won’t drop out until the October debate round since he’s already qualified for that.

“He’s in a tough position because the expectations were so high and that’s tough. I think he still has the opportunity to run for Senate in Texas, and he should take that,” Ward said. “The thing is it’s almost impossible to create a breakthrough moment,” he added, referring to Walter Mondale’s “Where’s the beef?” take down of Gary Hart and Lloyd Bentsen’s “John F. Kennedy” line to Dan Quayle as a few successful examples.

O’Rourke’s closer-than-expected 2018 run for the Senate in the conservative stronghold of Texas against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz drew comparisons to Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the formation of liberal groups egging him on to contest the White House. Nevertheless, the skateboard-riding, punk rock music fan turned politician failed to recapture the grassroots energy that catapulted him into national consciousness and fundraising record books, hauling in almost $79 million to Cruz’s $48 million. In contrast, he’s only raised about $12 million for his 2020 apparatus to date.

Under the stewardship of Barack Obama presidential campaign alumna Jen O’Malley Dillon, O’Rourke has sought to mitigate his dwindling prospects with two resets.

The first reset came in May when O’Rourke, a Columbia University graduate, started accepting more national media interview requests, a strategy he’d previously shunned in favor of a hectic schedule of smaller, guerrilla-style events across the country where he would routinely speak on top of a table. The second came in August after a white supremacist, parroting President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, shot dead 22 people in an El Paso Walmart with an assault-style rifle. O’Rourke took a two-week break from the trail, vowing in his return speech to more directly confront Trump while rejecting hackneyed campaign traditions like eating corn dogs at the Iowa State Fair.

The tactics, however, have failed to lift O’Rourke from the back of the historically large pack hoping to clinch the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination. His chances took their most public hit when, during June’s opening debate series in Miami, Obama administration-era housing secretary Julián Castro went after his Texas compatriot for not advocating for the decriminalization of illegal border crossings.

Ahead of Thursday night’s showdown in Texas, with its diverse population and 200-plus Democratic National Convention delegates, Castro, 44, is similarly looking to capitalize on a home turf advantage after solid performances in the previous debates. This week the former San Antonio mayor touted his odds against Trump, citing a new Univision News poll of the Lone Star State.

“Texas is a swing state. Period,” he tweeted. “In a head-to-head matchup, I would beat Donald Trump in my home state and defeat him next November.”

The survey of 1,004 Texans, conducted between Aug. 31 and Sept. 6 with a 3.1 percentage point margin of error, found that Trump was at risk of losing the state in 2020, securing only 42% of the vote compared to an unspecified Democrat’s 47%. Texas hasn’t gone for a Democratic White House hopeful in more than 40 years.

Both Hewitt and Ward were highly complimentary of Castro, who attended Stanford University and Harvard Law School.

“He’s a great vice presidential candidate because he’s, obviously he’s Hispanic, he’s bilingual, he’s from Texas, a state where numerous candidates in recently polling are running ahead of Donald Trump in the general election in Texas,” Hewitt said. “All that Castro does is strengthen that dynamic. As a VP candidate, a lot of times you’re sent to those secondary markets and I can tell you that he could go all over Texas and be very well received.”