It was announced on Friday that Beto O'Rourke, who is running an uphill race against Tailgunner Ted Cruz in Texas, had raised $38 million in the period since the last such accounting was taken. This, as The Texas Tribune informs us, is a record haul in The Great State.

The haul more than tripled Republican incumbent Ted Cruz's fundraising for the past three months, which Cruz has said was over $12 million. O'Rourke has consistently raised more than Cruz in the race, but this is the widest gap yet. The $38.1 million is by far the largest amount raised in a quarter by a Senate candidate, surpassing Republican Rick Lazio's record of $22 million in 2000 for his bid against Democrat Hillary Clinton in New York. O'Rourke's campaign said the $38.1 million came from 802,836 individual contributions, and a majority of it came from Texas.

(A brief aside: if you want to know how deeply anti-Clinton hysteria runs among Republicans, and how long it has been at a boil, consider that an unremarkable slice of white bread like Rick Lazio was able to raise $22 million to run against her 18 years ago.)

Almost as soon as the O'Rourke numbers were announced, my feed on the electric Twitter machine came alive with Democratic panic. Why spend all that money there? Look at that Quinnipiac poll. Shouldn't some of this go to Heidi Heitkamp or Joe Manchin, or at least to Phil Bredesen in Tennessee so he can get treatment for the Dutch Elm Disease that has struck him down recently? Some of my Republican followers gleefully chimed in, which should have been the cue for Democrats to shut the hell up.

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I swear, it must have been a high holy day in the Church of the Savvy. From The Washington Post:

One GOP operative calculates that what O’Rourke raised in three months is more than three times what Democrats have spent in North Dakota so far. It’s more than double what Democrats have spent in Tennessee and West Virginia.

Texas doesn’t even make the top 10 of the Fix’s latest rankings of the most competitive Senate races. Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Democratic candidate Phil Bredesen in Tennessee are all on the list. Some of those candidates, especially Heitkamp, are fighting for their political careers. And their races are crucial to helping Democrats take back the Senate.

“Every dollar that’s going to Beto," said one Republican operative watching the race closely and granted anonymity to speak candidly, “is a dollar that is not going to Florida or Montana or North Dakota.”

Of course, when I seek advice on how the Democrats should run their campaigns, I first go to anonymous GOP operatives. Second, it isn't even true. This isn't a zero-sum game. Nobody is stopping anyone from donating to the embattled incumbents, or to the somnolent Bredesen. Someone in Waco or Seagoville isn't choosing where to send his ten bucks either to O'Rourke or to Joe Manchin. Finally, what kind of journalism is it that grants anonymity to someone for this kind oft ruthless banality? Really, Post. Get it together. The only nice thing about this column is that, apparently, and much to my surprise, no Democrats agreed to play along.

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And, of course, the high priest of the Church of the Savvy weighed in at CNN.

O'Rourke is running for Senate in a state that hasn't had a Democratic Senator since Lloyd Bentsen in the early 1990s. In a state in which every statewide elected official is a Republican. In a state where no Democrat has won a statewide race since 1994. In a state where Jimmy Carter is the last Democratic presidential candidate to win.

None of that changes the remarkable accomplishment of raising $38 million in one three-month period. But it does put something of a damper on the idea that O'Rourke is the future of the Democratic Party. Typically, losing Senate candidates -- which is what, at least as of today, O'Rourke looks like -- don't wind up as the "future face" of any party. While an O'Rourke loss -- even a very well-funded one -- would be bad news for the narrative of O'Rourke as the next Barack Obama, it wouldn't be without lessons for Democrats.

It is here where we heretics from the Church of the Savvy point out that the actual Barack Obama lost his first race for Congress, too.

No matter. I think O'Rourke probably will find a six-to-eight-point gap extremely difficult to close in the last month, even though the Tailgunner has pretty much gone to ground. He cancelled a debate two weeks ago and he ducked out of a joint appearance on CNN Thursday night. Nevertheless, to decide that a loss finishes him somehow in national politics is preposterous. Authentic popular phenomena scare the hell out of the Church of the Savvy. They are the bleeding crucifixes of American politics.

(h/t as always to Jay Rosen, who first named the Church of the Savvy.)

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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