Is This the End of the Permanent Candidate Class?

Bidding farewell to Beto, Abrams, Crist — really, you can go now.

Texas has around 250 miles of border wall with Mexico, but it seems like the state’s most impenetrable barrier is the one keeping Beto O’Rourke out of statewide office.

Even though Republicans performed well below expectations on Tuesday night, O’Rourke was once again resoundingly rejected by voters, making 2022 his third humiliating flop in four years. Three years ago, O’Rourke dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, recognizing that consistently polling in the 4 percent range was not exactly a freeway to the presidency.

And just a year ago, the former three-term congressman lost a U.S. Senate race to Ted Cruz, one of the most embarrassing Republican politicians of this generation. (When Democrats point out how bad Republicans are, they appear unaware of their self-own; for every absurd Republican that’s elected, there’s always a Democrat who lost because they were even less palatable.)

Yet despite disgusted voters fleeing O’Rourke as if he were a thrift-store toothbrush, he continues to make running, and losing, his permanent occupation. To perennial candidates such as Beto, politics is like an electoral pyramid scheme: Each unsuccessful run builds up fame and name identification for the next unsuccessful run, and thus it continues.