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"Beto" will not be the Dem nominee. He can't keep up this "tell me who you want me to be" act all through the primary. Eventually he'll say something that triggers one of the lefty factions and they'll skin him alive as a privileged white male with a mostly blank resume.
If he manages to keep up his Tabula Rasa routine, the other Dems will pick him apart by feeding stories to the media. Slobbering coverage is the only thing he has going for him, and it can be taken away with one behind-the-scenes email blast from the DNC.
O'Rourke's fleeting moment in the sun is due entirely to a swooning love affair from reporters who hear faint echoes of Obama in his empty patter. The fact that they fell for such an implausible candidate so easily tells you a LOT about how the media sees the rest of the Dems.
Media people fancy themselves to be paramount judges of electability. They think O'Rourke has some, but none of the other Dems has enough to fare well against Trump. They can see themselves selling "Beto" with a panting intensity they wouldn't have for any of the others.
Media thinks one of the keys to O'Rourke's appeal is that he doesn't terrify middle-class voters the way most of the other Dems will. He's mushy and hopey-changey. Middle America will see the others as bitter dead-end class and race warriors pointing spears at them.
Just as O'Rourke is one day away from triggering one of the Democrat Civil War factions, so the other Dems are one day away from reactivating the Trump 2016 electorate in key states, causing middle class workers to seek shelter from angry left-wing politics under Trump's banner.
The only other candidate the media thinks might be able to put Obama's coalition back together and soothe the middle class is Joe Biden. The problem is, he's Joe Biden. The media doesn't relish a year of saving him from his own perpetual idiocy.
The media will use its Tiger Beat crush on "Beto" to send the rest of the Dem field a message about how they still need to run to the center, pretend to be moderates, and trick the middle class into voting for them.
It won't last, because the media won't hang up the phone when the more powerful and plausible candidates ring them up to tell them it's time for the "Beto" flirtation to end. If he doesn't self-destruct, he'll be destroyed.
Right now, media just wants the other Dems to understand why they love Beto so very, very much, and maybe be a little more like him instead of running social justice warrior campaigns... maybe consider hiring their dreamboat as a veep candidate.
Most of O'Rourke's weaknesses would fade on the bottom of the ticket. He could just peddle hopeychange mush and frown about how mean Donald Trump is. The other Dems wouldn't feel the need to destroy him. Media likes how he'd look on a debate stage with Pence.
Media would also love the symbolism of O'Rourke playing second banana to a more intersectionally appropriate female or minority candidate. The privileged white male scion put in his place at last!
Many of O'Rourke's fans (and donors) would follow him to the bottom of a ticket. Media would write about the warm glow THEY THEMSELVES created in early 2019 as though it was an objective fact of political history. They'd use him to sand the rough edges off the Dem nominee.
Interesting that Biden is signaling he'll make a veep pick early, which means it won't be "Beto." He's the one candidate that couldn't really use him anyway. The Dems cannot run a "two white guys" ticket, even if one of them pretends to be Hispanic. ESPECIALLY if.
So by drooling over O'Rourke at the campaign racetrack bar, Media is telling the Dem field they don't think Biden can win, no matter how formidable his Party connections are, and the others need more of that fuzzy moderate camouflage than they think they do. /end
