11.5

Lessons from Beto

I really enjoyed this CNN post-mortem of Beto O’Rourke’s journey from El Paso Congressman to close-loser for Texas Senate to far-loser for Democratic presidential nominee.

My first takeaway is that his 'authenticity' on the local/state stage was perceived much more cynically on the national stage. One of 2016’s lessons for Democrats was the incredible political power of authenticity and Beto does have that. When people met him - when he traveled to every county in Texas - people generally liked him, people can tell he means well. But you can’t meet everyone in the country, so on the national stage you lose that personal touch. You become much more susceptible to SNL-takes and caricatures. If you’re a liberal leader on the state or local level who truly connects with and cares about your constituents - there is zero shame in staying there! The national news media will hype you because it creates a narrative, and then destroy you because it creates a narrative. Just ask any celebrity.

My second takeaway is that it takes an incredible amount of organizational prowess to execute a presidential campaign, especially when you’re an underdog. It’s no surprise that it’s hard to build things, but when evaluating political figures, it’s easy to get distracted looking at the final product: The Candidate^TM. It’s easy to forget that the successes and failures of The Candidate^TM are often the result of various behind-the-scenes forces we can’t see: a large fundraising haul from a well-executed email marketing campaign, or a bungled press conference after a poorly-researched briefing on the facts. Beto was organized enough for his Senate race (although again, authenticity powered a lot of that), but maybe not organized enough for his Presidential campaign. Pete Buttigieg is the counterexample; his organizational execution is pretty damn impressive. People sometimes talk about “executive experience”, a preference for Governors over Senators in presidential races - in this case you could make the same argument about why Mayor Buttigeig has staying power over Representative O'Rourke.

Lafayette

November 5th, 2019