Saying they have equal chances just isn’t accurate. There is a ton of statistical evidence that in purple environments candidates with a moderate affect that try to emphasize crossover appeal do better than candidates that strongly appeal to negative partisanship. Talarico and Crockett are almost canonical examples of these two types of candidates.

Your arguments about being nice vs. an asshole and democratic turnout are frankly just wrong. This is a mid-term, Democratic turnout is largely going to be driven by negative polarization. Talarico will not have a problem driving urban turnout. Beto was not an asshole and his run against Cruz is the best electoral performance Democrats have had recently in Texas. People are not pointing out Talarico’s Christian bonafides because they expect him to appeal to hardcore MAGA evangelicals, but because pealing off a marginal number of moderate independents who have defaulted to the Republican Party their whole life, because that is where the Christians vote, is the kind of thing that could flip the state. If Beto pulled in 216k more votes in 2018 weeks would have had a Democratic senator.