you know and I know that Obama failed to meet the promise of his 2008 candidacy

and you may also know why it was a fail:
- bank bailouts
- no relief for the subprime mortgage fiasco
- Clintonite dickheads all over his cabinet
- pretty poor foreign policy

so on and so forth

but those specific reasons got NO play in the corporate media or the public "discussion" of Obama.

for a couple of reasons:
- the corporate media largely agrees with all of the above, especially the giveaways to the rich
- right wingers are given SO much leeway over the national discourse. we had 8 years of them throwing public racist temper tantrum just because he was black
- Dems in red states especially cowered to the aforementioned, in examples you have given in other posts.

so all we got in public is Obama the symbol for the most part, because the Republicans are SUCH shitheads and corporate media REALLY doesn't want to talk about what really went on during that time.

but let the "progressives" hear it and it's RAH-RAH-RAH OBAMA WAS A NEOLIBERAL CORPORATE CRONY BLAH BLAH BLAH MY BUTT ITCHES

the average person/voter doesn't associate Obama with these abuses, so saying Beto is "like Obama" is probably going to get the usual crowd behind him. it didn't work with Hillary, because she is a SHIT politician. Beto at least has an eye for what "plays".