The candidate who famously declared when he first jumped into the crowed field of Democrat presidential contenders that he was simply “born to run” announced Friday evening that he is quitting the race. Robert Francis “Beto” O'Rourke, who enjoyed a wave of Leftmedia hype during his failed bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in 2018, ironically faulted the media for his inability to gain any serious traction with his presidential campaign. Popularity is a fleeting thing, and O'Rourke offered little in the way of any substantive policy proposals. Instead, he ran a campaign that consisted largely of passionately and often vulgarly expressing social-justice platitudes.

From his declaration that he would tear down the walls that already exist on the U.S.-Mexico border to his support for slavery reparations and his repeated assertion that America is a racist nation to his plan to confiscate firearms (because Americans should not be allowed to own “weapons of war”), O'Rourke aimed to set himself apart as the most “woke” candidate.

The reality is that good political campaigns are run on more than passionately expressed platitudes. As Politico observes, “While other candidates were assembling campaign staffs and volunteer armies in early nominating states, O'Rourke lacked the infrastructure necessary to organize his own supporters. Lawmakers and major Democratic donors could not get calls returned. When the campaign’s skeletal staff promised to reach out, it sometimes forgot.” In other words, O'Rourke wasn’t much of a leader either.

The one service O'Rourke provided was his aforementioned gun policy, which exposed the Democrats’ long-term but rarely spoken agenda on firearms. While his calls for gun confiscation caused his fellow Democrats to issue words of caution about political feasibility, notably, none of them stood up against O'Rourke’s blatant assault on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. In this respect, Americans can thank O'Rourke for running.