That's true, but since then, he blew a lot of his cachet on a quixotic POTUS run (and the gubernatorial run—always likely to fail in a Democratic midterm—didn't do him any favors either).
In 2020, the White House was an open seat, and the Democratic primary attracted more than two dozen candidates. It was not inevitable, or even likely, until the end, that Joe Biden would emerge victorious. If Beto had won or even ended up being the loser chosen as vice president, we would be in a very different position today. John Hickenlooper was not disqualified from running for the Senate because he, too, was one of the losing candidates in the Democratic presidential primaries.
I would not dismiss him peremptorily. He has come closer to winning a Senate seat from Texas than any other Democrat since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.
That's true, but since then, he blew a lot of his cachet on a quixotic POTUS run (and the gubernatorial run—always likely to fail in a Democratic midterm—didn't do him any favors either).
If he hadn't run for governor, he would have been dismissed as a has-been who let his party down in a time of need.
No one would have blamed him for not taking on a campaign that was likely doomed from the start.
But he’d already damaged himself by running for POTUS.
In 2020, the White House was an open seat, and the Democratic primary attracted more than two dozen candidates. It was not inevitable, or even likely, until the end, that Joe Biden would emerge victorious. If Beto had won or even ended up being the loser chosen as vice president, we would be in a very different position today. John Hickenlooper was not disqualified from running for the Senate because he, too, was one of the losing candidates in the Democratic presidential primaries.