The UT Football News (AKA The Austin American Statesman) occasionally does non-sports coverage. On December 7^th, in fact, they reported that Robert “Beto” O’Rourke raised $80.4 million in his race to lose the Texas US Senate seat to Rafael “Ted” Cruz. Of course, being primarily college sports reporters, they don’t have quite the skill to either properly analyze the numbers relating to that contest or conceal damning information about the candidate they were obviously gaga for during the entire campaign.

Beto O’Rourke spent $77.6 million of that $80.4 million, almost twice what the Cruz campaign spent. He did end up with 822,924 more votes than the generic Democrat NPC who ran against Cruz in 2012, but spent $76.9 million more to do it. That means every extra vote cost more than $93. And that doesn’t include all the free publicity he got from the fawning national media. The Football News calls those numbers “eye-popping” and “record breaking,” but they can also be called “inefficient” and “wasteful.”

Of course, Cruz spent more money to get fewer votes than in 2012. Maybe you should spend a little more time in Texas, Rafael.

I also note that $1.3 million of the donations to BO* had to be returned because they were from foreign donors and exceeded contribution limits. Now I know that for most of you, $1.3 million is a rounding error, chump change. Still, that was more than the Democrat NPC spent on the campaign in 2012. If a reporter had some skill beyond analyzing the effect of a groin injury on next week’s game, they might ask some questions about this. Questions such as “Who was exceeding the limits and by how much?” and “Who are all these foreign donors?” Instead, the story just mentions it like it’s no big deal and goes on.

Also, they leave out the little detail about returned donations when comparing Cruz’s finances to O’Rourke’s. Of course, there could be a number of legitimate reasons for this:

1. “Oopsie, we forgot.”
2. “Cruz didn’t have any illegal donations.”
3. “The numbers for Cruz were so small that they made our preferred candidate look ridiculous by comparison.”
4. “A breaking story about the UT mascot’s hay consumption didn’t leave us enough space to put in those numbers.”

Beto has received some (muted) criticism for taking money and attention away from other candidates who might actually have won. For instance, assuming that a certain candidate was at least as inept at turning money into votes, $5.1 million would have made the difference in the governor’s race in Georgia. And only about $4 million would have turned both the senate and governor’s races in Florida. But it was very important for BO to lose by an amazing 2.6% instead of a less-amazing 3.3%.

And it worked! BO is now in third place in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. (Behind Joseph “Joe” Biden and Bernard “Bernie” Sanders.) And those losers in Georgia and Florida are nowhere to be seen, despite doing much better than our Beto. So, after consulting with his ego family, BO has decided to renege on the promise he made during the campaign and “look at” running for president.

I think that “cultural appropriation” is hogwash,** but it seems to be a very important concept to Democrats. I therefore find it odd that Beto is allowed to appropriate the name of a Hispanic. When he jumped to third place in the running for 2020, he pulled ahead of people like Elizabeth “Liz” Warren, Cory “Spartacus” Booker, and Kamala “Kamala” Harris. By the Democrats’ own standards these three are real minorities and/or women, as opposed to being a fake Latino. They have also each won at least one statewide election, ahead of Beto’s zero. I will admit that BO does a better job of awkwardly riding a skateboard and playing chords on a guitar. And man does he look sharp wearing a backpack!

 * Wow, he has the same initials as another empty suit poser with presidential ambitions despite having limited accomplishments. Quel coincidence!

** Duh, just look at my nom de plume.