This points to what was probably Bernie’s greatest strategic edge in the primary, and why there is a very good argument that he would have been the stronger general election foil to Donald Trump: In Bernie Sanders, voters saw not just someone who had a record of policy consistency that was unusual, to say the least, in the U.S. Senate, but also someone who had a simple and appealing narrative of what ails American society, and what to do about it. Even if you disagreed with some of his proposals, he seemed like he was on the up-and-up. And that’s important, because most American voters are not ideologues, and do not respond well to partisan rancor — a politics of unity has an enduring emotional appeal to independents…

What Bernie and Beto have in common is not necessarily policy, but the ability to engage this kind of person, voters who normally wouldn’t care about elections and to transform them into political animals who believe that change is possible by working within the system rather than bitterly watching from the sidelines. At his best, Obama had this quality too. I think we frequently forget that an eloquent, inspirational call for national unity is what launched him on a faster-than-light trajectory from state legislator to president in the first place. From what national Democrats saw of Beto this year, he seemed willing to speak truth to power even when doing so might cost him politically. The moment that took his Senate campaign from underdog longshot to national sensation was from August, when he was asked if it was “disrespectful to this country, to the flag, to service members” for NFL players to kneel during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality.