I generally finding myself agreeing or at least understanding your comments more often than not. But I think you are a bit off here. The reason Beto did so well was because he went out to talk with people and wasn't demonizing them for their views. He ran a very very good outreach campaign. But the reason he lost, was because he didn't also run an attack dog campaign to smear and make it embarrassing to vote for Cruz. Stewart is trying to get people to remember why they give a shit and to stop the division. I doubt he thinks he can reach Roger Stone, or extremists conspiracy nutters. But it would be possible to reach people like my mother. People who have been hoodwinked, realize it, but are just unsure they can make a change or who hate the rhetoric coming from the people they vote for.
There is a reason that some of the polls suggest nearly 80% of people want gun control. That gives us hope. The problem is that we have disinformation networks with good production/entertainment value. https://www.statista.com/statistics/699998/fox-news-viewers-age/