Nate Silver: “Beto is going to generate a lot of Takes and then there will be a backlash to the Takes and then a backlash to the backlash and a backlash to the backlash to the backlash and all of that is only going to generate even more Takes.”

“That is potentially quite a helpful dynamic if you’re one of 15-20 candidates running for the nomination and trying to stand out in a crowded field.”

Beto O’Rourke announced he was entering the presidential race with a video:

Said O’Rourke: “This is a defining moment of truth for this country and for every single one of us. The challenges that we face right now — the interconnected crises in our economy, our democracy and our climate — have never been greater. And they will either consume us, or they will afford us the greatest opportunity to unleash the genius of the United States of America.”

“In other words, this moment of peril produces perhaps the greatest moment of promise for this country and for everyone inside of it.

New York Times: “His decision jolts an early election season already stuffed with contenders, adding to the mix a relentless campaigner with a small-dollar fund-raising army, the performative instincts of a former punk rocker and a pro-immigrant vision to counteract President Trump’s.”

Beto O’Rourke will announce that he’s running for President on Thursday morning, KTSM reports.

O’Rourke confirmed his plans in a text message to the television station.

Beto O’Rourke tells Vanity Fair he wants to run for president: “You can probably tell that I want to run. I do. I think I’d be good at it. This is the fight of our lives. Not the fight-of-my-political-life kind of crap. But, like, this is the fight of our lives as Americans, and as humans, I’d argue.”

Asked about his rise, O’Rourke said: “I honestly don’t know how much of it was me. But there is something abnormal, super-normal, or I don’t know what the hell to call it, that we both experience when we’re out on the campaign trail.”

His wife, Amy O’Rourke, recalls the moment they first witnessed the power of O’Rourke’s gift during his campaign against Ted Cruz: “Every seat was taken, every wall, every space in the room was filled with probably a thousand people. You could feel the floor moving almost.”

NBC News: “Iowa Democratic political circles were also abuzz Monday with word that O’Rourke may have recruited a top Iowa political consultant and Hawkeye state native onto his potential campaign team.”

“Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price told NBC News that Norm Sterzenbach had left his role as a consultant with the party on Friday after launching its caucus operations for 2020, including the formation of virtual caucuses that will allow Iowans to participate if they are out of state on the day of the vote.”

“Sterzenbach, who formerly served as the state party’s executive director, left his position to join the efforts of a potential presidential candidate’s team.”

Beto O’Rourke is headed to Iowa this weekend, fueling speculation that the former Texas congressman and fundraising wunderkind will soon officially enter the packed Democratic primary race, CNBC reports.

“A prominent conservative group is thrusting itself into the Democratic primary with a TV ad assailing Beto O’Rourke — a move that comes as Republicans consider a broader campaign to meddle in the opposing party’s contest to take on President Trump,” Politico reports.

“The anti-tax Club for Growth is expected to begin airing a two-minute commercial in Iowa this week aimed at dampening liberal support for O’Rourke, who’s expected to enter the race any day. The spot paints the former Texas congressman as a politician dripping with ‘white male privilege’ who’s undeserving of the comparisons he’s drawing to Barack Obama.”

Politico: “With a thick crowd waiting in front of Austin’s Paramount Theatre, O’Rourke slipped into the premiere of his own documentary through an alley in the back. He waited for the lights to dim before joining the audience. And 10 days after declaring that he and his wife, Amy, had decided ‘how we can best serve our country,’ he once again refused to discuss his 2020 plans.”

Said O’Rourke: “I want to make sure I do it the right way and I tell everyone at the same time, so I’ll be doing that. I’ve got to be on the timeline that works for my family and for the country.”

“What is unusual is not that O’Rourke hasn’t said yet if he is running — Joe Biden hasn’t, either. It’s that O’Rourke, unlike any other potential presidential candidate, confirmed more than a week ago that he made his decision. He just won’t say what it is.”

Washington Post: “Celebrity exacts a cost, one that the documentary showed was borne by O’Rourke’s three young children…. The result is a glimpse at a wrenching reality rarely seen in the sanitized, smiling images usually put forth by candidates.”

“In one scene … O’Rourke’s wife explained that the children started writing old-school letters to their father instead of video-chatting with him because ‘after they hung up on the phone … they were in tears and really upset.’ The O’Rourke children recounted watching two heavily armed gun-rights activists confront their father at a gun-control march. And on the night their father lost the election, the children discussed how it made them sad to watch others cry.”

“As Beto O’Rourke continues to hold off on an announcement about his political plans, people working closely with him have begun making inquiries in New Hampshire about matters that would be central to a mounting a presidential campaign in the leadoff primary state,” WMUR reports.

“Key Democratic sources — who are not involved in any effort to draft O’Rourke — told WMUR that people close to O’Rourke have reached out to politically knowledgeable Granite Staters seeking advice on specifics concerning what a New Hampshire campaign would entail.”

Politico: “O’Rourke seems unwilling to place himself on his party’s conventional political spectrum. At the final town hall of his congressional career, the last of more than 100 such gatherings he held, O’Rourke was greeted in December at a local high school by cheerleaders, a mariachi band and supporters wearing T-shirts reading ‘Beto for President.’ In response to a question from Politico after the event, O’Rourke would not—or could not—answer if he considers himself a progressive Democrat.”

Said O’Rourke: “I don’t know. I’m just, as you may have seen and heard over the course of the campaign, I’m not big on labels. I don’t get all fired up about party or classifying or defining people based on a label or a group. I’m for everyone.”

Aaron Blake: “O’Rourke’s decision on whether to run is due in the coming days, and it looks as though he’s in. But what exactly will he run on? We tend to judge candidates like O’Rourke relative to whom they’re running against — in O’Rourke’s case in 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). But is he really the liberal hero Democrats are looking for, or just the guy they really wanted to unseat Cruz?”

“O’Rourke didn’t exactly run on a hugely liberal platform, and there will be pressure to define himself almost immediately if he gets in.”

Sasha Issenberg: “O’Rourke is now on the precipice of running for president with ‘losing Senate candidate’ as the most impressive line on his résumé. It was how he chose to run that campaign last year that sets him apart from his potential Democratic rivals. O’Rourke cast aside the hard-won heirlooms of Barack Obama’s campaigns: a vogue for data science, the grooming of a professional organizing class and a dedication to the humanism of one-on-one tutelage. Instead, his campaign followed principles that more closely resemble what Silicon Valley types call ‘hyperscale’—a system flexible enough to expand at exponential speed, paired with an understanding that getting big quickly can excuse and justify all kinds of other shortcomings.”

“In political terms, it amounted to a massive bet on a strategy of mobilizing infrequent voters instead of trying to win over dependable ones. National campaign strategists are paying close attention to how O’Rourke did it: Few candidates have committed as fully, if a bit recklessly, to the belief that a monomaniacal focus on large-scale turnout is the most powerful tool Democrats have to capitalize on their latent numerical majority in the United States.”

“A Democratic group seeking to persuade former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke to run for president will launch mobilization efforts on college campuses nationwide to coincide with what they believe will be his entry into the race by month’s end,” Reuters reports.

“The feud between President Donald Trump and Beto O’Rourke over immigration resumed at a distance on Tuesday, driving the politics of a border wall further into the 2020 presidential campaign,” Politico reports.

“Tying his political identity to this heavily Hispanic, heavily Democratic region of the Southwest, the former Texas congressman has seized on Trump’s border politics to create an opening for himself in the Democratic primary.”

Beto O’Rourke acknowledged he is considering runs for president and the Senate in 2020 and said he plans to decide on “what it is we do next” by the end of February, CNN reports.

Said O’Rourke: “I’m trying to figure out how I can best serve this country — where I can do the greatest good for the United States of America. So, yeah, I’m thinking through that and it, you know, may involve running for the presidency. It may involve something else.”