If they’re this excited now, imagine how excited they’d be if he’d led in a single poll taken this year.

I must say, although this is an affront to God and man I prefer this sort of mob to the usual snarling leftist horde chasing Republicans out of restaurants. (Slightly prefer.) And if you’re of the opinion that Beto is Obama 2.0 — minus the senatorial victory — this clip is another data point in your favor. Both men inspired their fans to literally sing their praises despite having resumes as thin as tissue paper. Imagine the hymns that’ll be sung to O’Rourke in two years, after he stuns the Democratic primary field and sweeps to the nomination.

The YMCA clip isn’t the only musical tribute either. I’ve attached a bonus clip below too. Although none of this is strategic by Betomaniacs, it’s actually helpful to his future ambitions to have them go over the top this way in a losing effort. Democrats will spend the next year noodling over what exactly they need from their 2020 nominee to beat Trump. Do they need to out-Trump him with an Avenatti type? Do they need someone who can reassemble the Obama coalition of young voters and minorities? Or do they simply need a candidate who can excite people? They had that with O, they lacked it sorely with Hillary. As robust as the coming Democratic field looks to be, the only serious contenders who have real charisma are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and each are older than time. Beto really is the closest thing they have to an Obama: Both are young and charismatic, both have a “melting pot” appeal in their background (merely symbolic in O’Rourke’s case, per his nickname), and although both are solidly liberal it was a certain vacuous personal glamour that each possesses that pushed them into political stardom. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand are pretty left-wing too but no one’s performing dance numbers dedicated to them.

All of which is to say, if Democratic voters conclude that the crucial missing ingredient in 2016 was inspiration then Beto! has a shot, with silly nonsense like this part of the case for him. Right, true, he’s going to lose to Cruz next month and it likely won’t be close. But if the current margin of seven points holds, it would mean O’Rourke cut Cruz’s margin from 2012 in half. (Or slightly more than half, actually.) And he did it by running as a loud-and-proud liberal in a state where that message is supposed to mean utter destruction. If he’s competitive in Texas, his fans will say, imagine what he’d be in Michigan and Pennsylvania. We shall see.