Beto O'Rourke nearly stole Ted Cruz's Senate seat during the 2018 midterms in a race that saw mainstream media lavish him with favorable coverage, running gushing stories on his band, his baseball team, even his tendency toward excessive sweating. While a win would have turned the Texas seat blue for the first time in 30 years – an accomplishment by any measure – the fawning media attention, and the millions of dollars in donations it spawned, should have given him the edge in wresting the seat from the charisma-challenged Republican incumbent's grasp.

But if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Like Joe Biden – another also-ran touted as the Great White Hope for Democrats in 2020 – O'Rourke has been teasing his candidacy for months, giving interviews long on dime-store philosophy ("I think that's the beauty of elections: You can't hide from who you are") and short on actual policy to Oprah and MSNBC's Chris Hayes  following a brief period of soul-searching during which the media seemed to fall out of love with his tabula-rasa essence. A glamorous Annie Leibovitz Vanity Fair photo spread – actual tagline: "Man, I'm just born to be in it" – sealed the deal on Wednesday, and that same afternoon, he confirmed to El Paso, Texas station KTSM that he was, in fact, running.

Twitter was nonplussed, Beto-mania having apparently run its course during the midterms.

Many feared his appeal was irretrievably linked to the fact that he was running against Cruz.