Milbank: Challenger to Ted Cruz riding high on ‘Betomania’

That inspiration is a template for O’Rourke’s mission to prove that the supposed trade-off facing Democrats — fire up the partisan base or appeal to independents and Republicans alarmed by President Trump’s excesses — is a false choice. His shoe-leather campaign through the 254 Texas counties aims simultaneously to boost turnout among the young and minorities, while also to compete in Republican strongholds full of white Trump voters worried about their way of life. “People look at us like maybe we read the map wrong,” he quips.

O’Rourke faces long odds. If somehow he prevails, he would vault to the front of the pack of Democratic presidential hopefuls in 2020. But, win or lose, he seems to have a formula for exciting partisan Democrats without spooking everybody else.

Democrats in House and Senate races across the country, trying to appeal to voters fed up with hyperpartisanship, are trying some version of this, emphasizing their desire to “work together.” But none has found a special sauce anywhere near as popular as the one flavoring Betomania.

His speeches have little red meat and few mentions of Cruz or Trump. And though he doesn’t hide his progressive positions — for single-payer health care and legal marijuana, against a border wall — he avoids purity tests, such as a reflexive demand for Trump’s impeachment. His partisan jabs are delicate.

Cool factor

Harder for other Democrats to reproduce is O’Rourke’s cool factor: skateboarding at Whataburger, playing the air drums, doing his laundry on Facebook Live, and scoring appearances with Ellen DeGeneres and Stephen Colbert after saying there’s “nothing more American” than the right of football players to protest during the national anthem.

And, certainly, a lot of Betomania has nothing to do with O’Rourke: He’s the vessel for people appalled by Trump and by Cruz. O’Rourke argues, correctly, that people have already “formed an opinion” about those men and that there’s not “much I can add to that.” This allows him to rise above Cruz’s falsehoods and venom.

Evidence suggests that partisanship has never been stronger. O’Rourke believes the opposite, that the trauma of the moment “is allowing people to transcend the conventional definitions by party.”

When O’Rourke finally finishes his speech in San Antonio, to earsplitting cheers, he emerges to see hundreds waiting for pictures with him. Police form a ring around him to push back the surging crowd, to no avail.

Had the reaction been like this two decades ago when O’Rourke toured the country as a little-known punk rocker, he never would have gone into politics.

“It was nothing like this,” he says, waving to the throng. With a kamikaze yell — “heyyyyyyyyyy!” — the candidate plunges into the crowd, and a roar goes up.