Former congressman and losing Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke, who just announced he is running for president, is not going to win. But he could prove disruptive to the 2020 Democratic race.

As I explained in more detail before, O'Rourke is highly overrated as a presidential candidate. Glowing media coverage aside, comparisons that have been leveled to the relatively inexperienced 2008 version of Barack Obama are unwarranted. Among other things: Obama had more national experience, he won his senate race, as the potential first black president he dominated among black voters while appealing to educated whites as well, and he had an issue, the Iraq War, on which his early opposition set him apart from his opponents.

O'Rourke, a white male candidate coming off a loss, who has in the past expressed centrist views, and who has no experience in national politics, is going to fail against a more liberal, more experienced, and more diverse field.

That said, he could have an affect on the contours of the race.

Though O'Rourke has very little to offer as a candidate, he does have something going for him, and that's the media's embarrassing love affair with him. I mean, they are absolutely obsessed with him. The latest Vanity Fair cover profile includes breathless lines such as: "unlike Trump, O’Rourke can appear almost too innocent to be a politician—too decent, too wholesome, the very reason he became popular also the same reason he could be crucified on the national stage. I tell O’Rourke that perhaps he’s simply too normal to be president. 'Whether you meant it or not, I take that as a compliment,' he says."

President Trump's election, particularly his emergence from a crowded field, is clearly a demonstration of how the media can help elect a candidate by providing wall-to-wall coverage. For Trump's defeated Republican primary opponents, one of the biggest complaints was that it was absolutely impossible to gain any traction or attention in the face of this media onslaught. It's been estimated that Trump received $2 billion in free media during the primaries, which played a crucial role in his ability to vanquish 16 opponents with significantly more political experience.

I don't think O'Rourke can quite achieve this, because he has not been a national celebrity for decades, and he is not going to make a constant string of shocking statements, creating daily headlines. Also, he'll have to compete with Trump himself for airtime.

However, O'Rourke still will attract a significant amount of media attention. So, the way O'Rourke will have an effect is that it will become significantly harder for other Democratic candidates with lower name recognition to get their message out. So while he won't win, his presence will make it harder for candidates in the low, single digits to make a move toward the top of the pack.

South Bend's young mayor, Pete Buttigieg, is coming off a well regarded performance on a CNN town hall, and may have been on the cusp of a mini-boomlet. He likely would have started to receive more media coverage, interviews, and profiles. But now that journalists have their first love in O'Rourke, he'll receive less attention.

Candidates like Colorado's former Gov. John Hickenlooper, or Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand polling at 1 point or less, are going to have a tougher time breaking through the wall of coverage of O'Rourke.

Right now, former Vice President Joe Biden's indecision is the biggest question mark on the Democratic side. But in most polls we're seeing, you have Biden at the top in the high 20s, with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a relatively close second in the low 20s, and then the rest of the pack well behind. Sen. Kamala Harris is in the best position after the Biden-Sanders bloc, typically polling in the low double digits. After that you tend to see her colleagues: Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar on the border before you get into the world of 1 percenters.

Right now, O'Rourke is polling between Booker and Klobuchar, and I'd expect him to get an announcement bump now that he's back in the news. So, I think his main impact will be that he'll make life difficult for anybody behind Klobuchar to break out.