When he was challenging for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat last year, Beto O’Rourke was hailed by Texas progressives, the mainstream media, and his Hollywood backers as the next coming of Barack Obama. Young, thin, and…well, we suppose that’s about all he had going for him, because his star faded fast. O’Rourke thought he could use the failed Senate bid as a launching pad for national political stardom, though, and so he became one of the first Democrats to jump into the presidential ring. But after a blockbuster fundraising haul in his first weeks, O’Rourke’s rose has started to fade in color. Obama 2.0? Not so much.

From The New York Times:

The gap between the rich and the poor in the Democratic presidential primary is growing — and Beto O’Rourke has landed on the worrisome side of the dividing line.

Mr. O’Rourke, who had entered the race in March with the promise of being a top candidate and a financial powerhouse, faltered in dramatic fashion in second-quarter fund-raising, announcing on Monday that he had taken in only $3.6 million. The sum was a fraction of what the front-runners brought in.

In fact, Mr. O’Rourke’s total for the 90-day period was far less than he raised in his first 24 hours as a candidate, when he received $6.1 million.

“We had a lot of that energy early,’’ Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign manager, said in an interview Monday night. “We didn’t have the organization that could capitalize on that. And that’s what we’ve been building.’’

Ohh, NOW you’re going to fix it. Sure. Cool. We’ll look forward to seeing that happen.

Except, of course, it isn’t going to happen. Beto’s goose is cooked, a fact that was obvious last month when he engineered a supposed “reboot” of his campaign after his poll numbers started to sink like a stone. The big news out of his campaign this week was his announcement that he’s descended from slave owners. Um, yeah. That’s not exactly what winning presidential campaigns are made of.

The truth, though, is that Beto isn’t the only Democrat struggling to pay the bills. Even among the limousine-riding stars at the top of the field, the money is less than impressive. To put it in perspective, President Trump and the RNC announced Monday that they put $123 million in the bank during the second quarter of the year. That’s more than the top five Democrat candidates combined.

We’re thinking Beto isn’t the only one without the slightest prayer of defeating Trump next year. He just may realize it sooner than the others.