Blog Stage Three: Critique an editorial or commentary from a Texas newspaper

On August 23, 2018, R.G Ratcliffe of Texas Monthly wrote a commentary titled “Beto O’Rourke Is Everywhere. Why Don’t More Texas Voters Know Him?"

In this article, Ratcliffe compaires O’Rourke’s and Cruz’s pole numbers and discusses how O’Rourke is consistently a few points behind Cruz, and possible reasons why.

The author of the article, R.G. Ratcliffe, appears to be targeting the specific group of people that support Beto O’Rourke, and are wondering why he is constantly one step behind Ted Cruz. Though, this article isn’t tailored specifically for that group. The analysis is written in a non opinionated way, such that it is insightful for anybody interested the feud between Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz.

Ratcliffe appears to be a credible author. Not only does he work for a well known news source, but he also provides hyper links for all of the data he uses in this article. This allows any reader to double check his work, should they feel the need.

The article focuses on the possible reasons that Beto wasn’t very known (at the time the article was published), despite several viral videos, and television exposure. One of the contributors Ratcliffe pointed out, is that many of the views that made Beto’s videos go viral, came from out of state. In the article, Ratcliffe stated “A viral video outside of Texas might help O’Rourke’s fundraising, but it doesn’t necessarily put him in touch with Texas voters.” This is a very good point. People shouldn’t base opinions solely on numbers, they see were those numbers are coming from.

Ratcliffe noted that the poles he got his numbers from, were taken before O’Rourke’s 1.3 million dollar adverting campaign. Yet, Ratcliffe notes that Beto’s campaign is about “building a band wagon” and that it doesn’t even inform voters on what office Beto is even running for.

Overall, this is a well written article that provides thoughtful commentary, and a well researched approach to the analysis. However, Ratcliffe never really gives his readers a firm answer to his own title question. He ends the article by stating “What the surveys have been telling me this summer is that O’Rourke is a candidate with great potential. He also is a bubble that could easily get popped.” Ratcliffe throws a bunch of numbers at his readers, and interprets them, but he doesn’t talk about how those numbers affect Beto’s following.