I’ve posted five or six riffs about how Beto O’Rourke has to run against Donald Trump in 2020 — no ifs, ands or buts. An 11.11 Hill piece by Amie Parnes (“Beto 2020 Calls Multiply Among Dems“) stirred the pot a bit. Last Tuesday a similar piece by Politico‘s David Siders had a snap-crackle-pop effect.

“The prospect of a presidential bid by O’Rourke, whose charismatic Senate candidacy captured the party’s imagination, has suddenly rewired the race,” he wrote. “O’Rourke — who raised a stunning $38 million in the third quarter of his race — is widely considered capable of raising millions of dollars quickly, according to interviews with multiple Democratic money bundlers and strategists, catapulting him into the upper echelons of the 2020 campaign.”

The implication of the Siders piece is that O’Rourke will need to pull the trigger by early ’19, certainly by March or April if not before.

Excerpt: “Mikal Watts, a San Antonio-based lawyer and major Democratic money bundler, said several donors and political operatives in Iowa, after hearing from other potential candidates in recent days, have called to ask whether O’Rourke is running, a sign of his impact in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

“They’re not wanting to sign on to other presidential campaigns until they know whether Beto is going,” Watts said. “And if Beto is running, what good progressive Democrat wouldn’t want to work for Beto O’Rourke?”

Once again, O’Rourke will beat Trump because (a) he’s a blend of Barack Obama, Bobby Kennedy and Bill McKay, and will enlist the enthusiasm of younger voters, (b) he’s 16 or 17 times smarter and more knowledgable than Trump, not to mention more eloquent and principled, (c) is 26 years younger than Trump, (d) at 6′ 4″, he’s roughly two inches taller (and the taller candidate almost always wins), not to mention a lot thinner, (e) he skateboards and (f) played in a band in the ’90s. A changing of the generational guard — sold.