Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke’s Senate campaign crashed harder Tuesday evening than a speeding Volvo driven by a drunk judge’s son.
Glum-faced news anchors have called the Texas Senate race for incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. By 10:40 pm EST, the Republican held a 3.3-point lead with 38 percent of precincts reporting, ending one of the most expensive elections in American history.
Cruz raised $40 million in this election cycle, and spent roughly $33.8 million, according to the Center for Respective Politics. If you think that’s a lot, it’s not much compared to O’Rourke’s haul. The Texas congressman raised an astonishing $69 million in a race that every poll said he would lose. O’Rourke’s campaign also spent $59 million. So, that was smart.
His defeat will no doubt come as a terrible blow to all the hard-hitting news reporters who dedicated thousands of words to detailing how much he loves driving and practicing his Spanish. But they shouldn’t think of it as a loss! They should think of the “Kennedyesque” candidate’s failure to unseat Cruz as an uplifting reminder that money can’t buy elections.
Going forward, the real fun will be watching O’Rourke supporters convince themselves that his defeat is really a moral and incremental victory. Just you wait and see. There’ll be no shortage soon of news articles spinning what the polls called from the get-go as a good thing for the Democrats.
Beto still called the impossible into question. He’s just getting started.
— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) November 7, 2018
“Win or lose, Beto O’Rourke set to emerge victorious,” read a headline tweeted by Reuters.
The Texas Observer went with something similar, which read, “Win or Lose, Beto O’Rourke Has Provided a Blueprint for Texas Democrats.”
“Beto O’Rourke could lead a blue wave in Texas — even if he loses his Senate race,” said a Vox headline.
Well, no. That’s not how “losing” works.
Anyway, I’m sure the other Democrats who lost Tuesday evening are positively thrilled that roughly $70 million was siphoned by a race they all knew was doomed to fail. Also, and I may be getting ahead of myself here, but I don’t think that sinking millions of dollars into doomed political campaigns is the wisest and most efficient path towards changing electoral maps. Just ask Wendy Davis or Jon Ossoff.
