Beto O’Rourke, the erstwhile congressman from El Paso, Texas, who has far more glossy national magazine profiles than winning campaigns, is about to go down to defeat in his attempt to unseat centrist conservative Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott is a popular governor and quite capable in his own right of popping wheelies over most Democrats. But Beto has approached his run with all of his usual nationally tested talking points recycled from his idiotic presidential crusade, designed to go viral on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and via the T-shirt worn by your daughter’s boyfriend who is still trying to find himself after sophomore year.

O’Rourke is depicted in these profiles in a way typically confined to the pages of poorly written romance novels originally conceived by housewives who had youthful fantasies about Bobby Kennedy ravaging them tastefully in Peter Lawford’s beach house, albeit after a good day of beefing ollies in the Whataburger parking lot.

The Beto “swoonery,” as Jack Shafer called it, has proven to be the most enduring aspect of his brand, as if designed by NBC writers as a follow-on to Martin Sheen on The West Wing. He even had the high intellects and moral exemplars of “Pod Save America,” Obama veterans Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor, bet big on his potential. And it was all for naught.

[Oh, let’s hope not. — Ed]