This time, Beto, you will need substance to match your style

Five months ago, we recommended Beto O’Rourke for the U.S. Senate. We did so because we believed that Texas has had enough of the politics of division, a brand of politics that the incumbent senator, Ted Cruz, had embraced.

But we offered our recommendation of O’Rourke with an understanding that even as he deserved a shot to prove himself on the next rung of the political ladder, he ran a campaign that left many questions about his vision and about where he would take his policy ideas.  O’Rourke’s tone was right. What he needed was more substance, more specifics.

In many ways, this approach was workable in that race for that specific office.  After all, if elected, he would have become one of 100 senators and have played a role that very much involved the give-and-take of legislative sausage-making.  

In the end, of course, it wasn’t enough to win.  His policy statements too often lacked clarity. When he did clarify them, they were sharply left of where many Americans, and certainly many Texans, stand. O’Rourke may have missed his chance to beat Cruz because he was unwilling to either fully own the progressive nature of his beliefs, or because he was unwilling to stake out a middle ground left of Cruz but still palatable to a majority in our state.

He will face the same problem in the coming presidential campaign, although it may, in some ways, be easier for him. A good number in the Democratic primary field are already so far to the left it would be hard to outflank them without offering extreme, uncompromising positions.