Could Beto O'Rourke Be The 2020 Democratic Nominee?

(This photo of Beto O'Rourke was found at crooked.com.)

Could the Texas Senate candidate (Beto O'Rourke) who lost to Ted Cruz in the 2018 election be a viable candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president? Is O'Rourke interested in pursuing that nomination? The answer to both of those questions is a resounding "Maybe".

The day after the election, O'Rourke told the media that he was not interested in running for president in 2020. But it seems he may have changed his mind. After reflecting and noticing that there does seem to be some interest in him running, he recently told reporters:

“Amy and I made a decision not to rule anything out.”

And there does seem to be some interest among Democrats outside of Texas. Right after the election, Des Moines Democrats invited O'Rourke to visit them. They want to meet him and decide for themselves if he could be a viable candidate.

And The Hill is reporting that many Obama aides and allies are excited about the possibility of an O'Rourke candidacy, and say they would support him. They point out the similarities between Barack Obama and Beto O'Rourke.

Both are political upstarts with unusual names who seemingly came out of nowhere and inspired thousands upon thousands of people to be part of a movement.

In many ways, say the Obama supporters, O’Rourke is a 2020 version of their former boss.

“That ability to make people feel invested in his campaign and his story does remind me of Obama ‘08,” said David Litt, who served as a speechwriter in the Obama White House. “You see the crowds and the enthusiasm, the kind of movement that isn’t about me but about us.” 

Litt, the author of “Thanks, Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years,” said O’Rourke, like Obama, is the kind of candidate that inspirers staffers to go the extra mile. 

“They wanted to put in an extra shift or make a dozen phone calls on his behalf or talk to their neighbors because they really believe in him,” he said. “And even when he came up short, everyone felt like they had achieved something great. There are very few people who can inspire that kind of sentiment.” 

Another former Obama aide said O’Rourke, even after losing his Senate bid, has energized the party like no one since the former president. 

“The party hasn’t seen this kind of enthusiasm since Obama,” the aide said. “There isn’t one other potential candidate out there that has people buzzing. And that’s exactly why people supported Obama and why they’ll support Beto.” 

And Dan Pfeiffer at crooked.com gives four reasons why an O'Rourke candidacy might be just what the Democrats need:

First, the best campaigns marry enthusiasm and organization. Any smart campaign with competent staff can build a top-flight organization, but enthusiasm is not something that can be engineered in a lab. It is spontaneous and only a few candidates are able to inspire it. Enthusiasm means more volunteers, more first time voters, and more grassroots donations.

I have never seen a Senate candidate—including Obama in 2004—inspire the sort of enthusiasm that Beto did in his race. This is about more than Lebron wearing a Beto hat, or Beyonce sporting one on Instagram. It’s about the people all over the country with no connection to Texas with signs in their yards and stickers on their cars. It’s about the hundreds of thousands of people across the country who gave small dollar donations because they were inspired by his candidacy and moved by his pledge not to take PAC money. It’s about the crowds of thousands in small towns that would turn out to hear him speak on rainy weeknights. It’s about the passionate army of volunteers who knocked doors, made calls, and sent text messages. He built a national grassroots movement for change and many of those people are waiting to be called into duty and head to Iowa and New Hampshire. The enthusiasm is real and matters. If Beto were to go to Iowa City next week, I am confident he would draw a crowd three times larger than any candidate has since Obama first stumped there.

Second, despite losing his Senate race, Beto has a very strong case to make that he can put together a winning coalition. Democrats are engaged in a never-ending, emphatically stupid, ill-informed debate about whether the party should appeal to a growing base or try to court more moderate independent voters. This is a false choice—up until the moment the electoral college is abolished, the only way a Democrat can piece together the 270 votes necessary to win the White House is do both. Our nominee needs to be able to excite first time and periodic voters to turn out AND win over independent voters, particularly in the exurban and rural counties that turned Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania from Obama blue to Trump red. This was the formula Beto used to do better than any Democrat has done in Texas in decades. According to exit polls, first time voters made up one-fifth of the electorate and went for Beto by 14 points. Beto’s successful progressive appeal to the base didn’t turn off the middle—he did 12 points better with independents than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. That wasn’t enough to win in Texas, but if he even came close to repeating that performance nation-wide, he would deliver every state Obama won in 2012, and could make Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia competitive.

Third, the DNC has played with the primary calendar multiple ways this century and yet Iowa is still kingmaker. Victory in Iowa propelled Al Gore, John Kerry, Obama, and Hillary Clinton to their nominations, and Beto seems tailor-made for the state. The O’Rourke campaign in Texas was essentially an Iowa Caucus campaign on a grander scale. He visited every one of Texas’s 254 counties. He held town halls every night and seemed to enjoy the back and forth with voters that is key to a successful Iowa campaign. If you can win in Iowa, you can win the White House, and Beto just proved he has what it takes to win in Iowa.

Finally, Democrats have fallen behind Republicans on the campaign-innovation curve—it’s a key reason we lost in 2016. But a Beto O’Rourke presidential campaign has the potential to change this. Like Obama’s 2008 campaign, Beto’s Senate campaign felt different because it was different. He didn’t hire a pollster. He spoke like an actual human instead of an AI-generated amalgamation of focus grouped talking points and consultant approved buzzwords like “fight” and “everyday Americans.” He spent his money on digital advertising rather than dump it into the black hole of TV ads that fatten consultant pockets more than they inform voters; and he communicated with voters in innovative ways. By live-streaming so much content, Beto was able to tell his own story directly to the voters without filtering it through the funhouse mirrors of the legacy media. Tens of millions of people watched Beto’s impassioned defense of NFL players exercising their right to protest, taking his message directly to the people, instead of relying on the mainstream media or political Twitter to do the job for him. If Democrats run the same old campaign, using the same tired and outdated tactics, we will certainly lose to Trump. Our nominee must have the courage to run a different kind of campaign. Beto has demonstrated that courage.