[Posted by Nate Silver on 3.6.19]: “By virtue of being a FiveThirtyEight and/or a @NateSilver538 follower, your political tastes are much too highbrow. You like Elizabeth Warren because of her detailed policy stances. You’re bullish on Kamala Harris and Cory Booker because you think they could unite the different factions of the party as evidenced by their strong start in endorsements.

“Most Democrats aren’t like you, though. They don’t care that much about policy or any of that shit. They almost certainly have never visited the FiveThirtyEight endorsement tracker. They don’t even follow the news cycle all that closely. They weren’t aware of Beto’s road trip, let alone that it became a subject of derision by smart-aleck journalists. They just want someone who can beat Trump.

“And from what they do know about Beto, they like him, he makes them feel good, and they think — despite his Texas loss to Ted Cruz — he’s a 2020 winner.

“Start with Beto’s favorability ratings, which are among the strongest in the field. In this week’s batch of Morning Consult polling, for instance, which is culled from interviews with more than 12,000 Democratic voters, Beto had the second-best ratio of favorable to unfavorable ratings, with 43 percent of Democrats saying they have a favorable view as compared to just 8 percent with an unfavorable one. Only Biden’s ratio is better, and indeed, Biden, Beto, Sanders and Harris are the four strongest candidates by this metric, just as betting markets have them.”