Speculation that U.S. Representative Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (D-Texas) will run for president in 2020 following his surprisingly strong, yet unsuccessful, run for the U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz is not being well received by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Though neither Sanders nor O’Rourke has officially announced whether he will run in 2020, O’Rourke’s narrow defeat — losing by just 2.6 points in a state normally regarded as a Republican stronghold — immediately caused him to be considered by many as a serious Democratic presidential hopeful.
NBC News quoted Nomiki Konst, a progressive activist and 2016 Sanders supporter now running for public advocate in New York City, who explained that liberal activists kept quiet about their concerns over O’Rourke’s record when he was running for the Senate, but that has changed as O’Rourke is now seen as a threat to Sanders in the 2020 primary.
“They sucked it up while he was running” because they wanted him to win, Konst said. “But now it’s a different story.”
The report cited a Quinnipiac University poll released December 19 showing that 57 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 34 have a favorable view of Sanders, while his unfavorable ratings are higher than his favorables with voters 35 and older.
For comparison, 25 percent of millennials view O’Rourke favorably and 15 percent view him unfavorably, with 59 percent telling Quinnipiac they haven’t heard enough about him to know how they feel.
The NBC report indicated that many “progressives” who would normally support Sanders thought that O’Rourke wasn’t progressive enough and is too close to Republicans in Congress. However, in the most recent “Freedom Index” in The New American, O’Rourke scored 26 percent and Sanders scored 31 percent, so their records are actually quite similar. If anything, O’Rourke could be considered slightly more “progressive” than Sanders.
An article in The Hill on November 30 quoted Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s White House chief of staff in 2009 and 2010 and a congressman from 2003 to 2009, as critical of the possibility of a presidential bid from O’Rourke.
“If Beto O’Rourke wants to go and run for president, God bless him, he should put his hat in and make his case,” Emanuel said on MSNBC. “But, he lost. You don’t usually promote a loser to the top of the party.”
Image: crockodile / flickr.com via Wikimedia Commons
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