Former congressman from El Paso enters a crowded Democratic field – can he solidify his platform and take it to a national level?

Losing a federal election in your home state is not normally seen as a ticket to the White House. But then not everybody is capable of being defeated in the style of Beto O’Rourke.

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The former congressman from El Paso, the city on the US-Mexico border in the far west of Texas, was outgunned in last November’s US midterms Senate race by the incumbent and former presidential candidate, Ted Cruz. By convention, that should have been the last we heard about O’Rourke on the national stage for a while – instead it has propelled him into his newly announced presidential run.

The answer to that paradox partly lies in Texas, a state that has been in a Republican stranglehold for more than 20 years. That O’Rourke lost so well in the red state – falling just 2.6% of votes short of winning – has unleashed Democratic hopes that Texas might finally be in play.

But most of the explanation lies with O’Rourke himself. He brought to his unlikely campaign, skills and qualities that the Democratic party at national level is gasping for.

Some of those qualities are cosmetic. Tall, at 6ft 4in, with a beaming smile, a thumping stage presence and deep chocolatey voice, O’Rourke, 46, does well in front of the camera. The point may be facile, but when the Republican opponent happens to be a former reality TV star now ensconced in the Oval Office, “Betomania” is not to be sniffed at.

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No one can accuse him of lacking effort. During the Senate race, he wore down his political shoe leather with a relentless road trip – his trademark campaigning method – to all of Texas’s 254 counties.

That included King county, which Donald Trump won in 2016 by 94% to Hillary Clinton’s 3%. Trump supporters, he has said, “are every bit as deserving of my attention, of being listened to, of being fought for, of being served, even if they didn’t vote for me”.

When the Guardian interviewed a young Latino man in the small country town of Gonzales who was not registered to vote, O’Rourke read the article and asked one of his volunteers to make a 70-mile drive to help the man fill out the registration paperwork.

He is also a dab hand at social media which, were he to make it all the way to the Democratic nomination, would be important in facing Trump with his 59 million Twitter followers. While Trump is a master of trolling, O’Rourke chooses to wield social media power through interaction.

At times he has invited ridicule by taking social media intimacy to extreme lengths – notably when he invited his fans literally inside his mouth during a trip to the dentist. But his almost confessional style on Instagram and Medium – after the midterm defeat he talked about being “stuck” and in a “fog” – has earned him wide devotion.

O’Rourke’s political track record is relatively thin in the regular playbook. He had a partially successful early career as a punk musician, followed by six years on the city council of El Paso and a similar stint as the city’s representative in Congress.

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During the battle against Cruz he built up an army of volunteers that by the end was 25,000 strong, and he amassed a fortune of more than $70m – a sum greater than any in US Senate campaign history – drawn from all over the country, overwhelmingly in small donations.

Star power has also been drawn to him – another beneficial factor in the age of celebrity. He has been given the imprimatur of Oprah, who interviewed him for her SuperSoul podcast.

Oprah asked him what would sway him to take on a grueling run for the White House, and he replied: “Can I be part of bringing people together in a deeply divided country around things we agree are common? Can we have a common conception of what it is to be an American? If I can play some role in helping the country to do that, by God I’m going to do it.”

That positive message of national healing might be his strongest asset in a very crowded and diverse Democratic field so far. But despite all these skills and natural advantages, his presidential candidacy faces some daunting challenges.

First, can he elevate himself from border-town and state-level politics to the far more testing stage of national and world affairs? When the Washington Post’s political reporter Jenna Johnson spent time with O’Rourke at the Mexican border in January she was surprised by how vague his politics were, how lacking in specifics.

“When it comes to many of the biggest policy issues facing the country today, O’Rourke’s default stance is to call for a debate,” she observed. O’Rourke will have a lot of prepping to do before the first Democratic debate takes place under the unforgiving glare of TV lights in June.

Then there is the question of his policy platform. At a time when the Democratic party has taken a leap to the left in reaction to Trump and at the instigation of a new generation of young leaders personified by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar, his upbeat message of reuniting the country may fall short.

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He also has a more conservative voting record on Capitol Hill than many might have expected, often siding with Republicans and Trump administration policies, analysis last year showed.

And he will be up against perhaps the biggest gun of all in the Democratic field if Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s vice-president, throws his hat in the ring in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, can he find his feet when up against the economic radicalism of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the civil rights radicalism of Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, the ambitious immigration plan of Julián Castro?

During his Senate run, O’Rourke pressed his credentials over immigration, calling for a pathway to citizenship for the Dreamers who were brought to the US unlawfully, as children, and opposing Trump’s wall and family separations at the US-Mexico border. He also had a robust manifesto for investing in public schools.

But his call for improvements to Obamacare may come across as cautious up against several rival candidates who have embraced Medicare for All. And his fondness for the second amendment on gun rights – not surprising for a Texan – could be problematic in the wake of Parkland and other mass shootings.

Even before he announced his candidacy, O’Rourke was already coming under liberal fire for being too closely aligned with Wall Street, insufficiently daring on healthcare and under the influence of the fossil fuel industry.

Betomania will take O’Rourke only so far without a sharper political posture. Now the real work begins.