[T]here’s more than a year until the Iowa caucuses, more than thirty Democrats are pondering a presidential run and the leading contenders haven’t announced their intentions, but Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke is officially in the running to be this election’s Bernie Sanders.
MoveOn, the progressive policy advocacy group and political action committee, found in its recent survey of its membership that 15.6 percent supported O’Rourke, 14.9 percent were in favor of former Vice President Joe Biden, and 13.1 percent supported Sanders.
MoveOn enthusiastically endorsed the Vermont senator for the Democratic nomination in 2016 after he won 78.6 percent of the member vote.
Although Biden continues to lead nationwide polls by a longshot, the fight between “Berniecrats” and “Betomaniacs” has quickly moved to the center of the conversation among political prognosticators, at least for the moment.
“Beto is the new Bernie,” was the headline of an article in The Week. “That’s this cycle’s ‘Bernie army’—it’s ‘Beto’s army,’” a major Democratic donor told Politico. “The afterglow of Betomania may be about to fade as it slams into the Berniecrats,” concluded the Texas Monthly.
Bill Galston, a Democratic primary politics expert at the Brookings Institution, said at this early stage all that is being registered in the polls is name recognition. So it should be no surprise that leading the pack are Biden, Sanders, and O’Rourke, who is riding a wave of popular support following a losing effort to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
“Everyone knows Vice President Biden has universal name recognition, everyone knows that after 2016 Sen. Sanders has close to universal name recognition and there has been so much press about Beto O’Rourke,” Galston said, “Certainly they have some advantages at this point.”
Sanders has repeatedly said he will make his decision to run or not based on whether he believes he is the best candidate to beat President Donald Trump.
Galston said he has “grave doubts”about whether Sanders is the Democrats best hope for winning back the White House, adding that this time around Sanders can expect a far more difficult campaign than he did in 2016.
“The most salient fact about 2016 is, for very different reasons, neither Democrats nor Republicans wanted to lay a glove on Sanders. If he is the candidate this time, it will be different. If he is the nominee this time, it will be different,” Galston said.
Eric Davis, a Middlebury College professor emeritus of political science, said Sanders faces a much more difficult challenge this election cycle than in 2016 because he had little competition for the progressive vote, running against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.
“This year, with a lot of progressive candidates, he has to make a more positive campaign for himself. And make the case why a white man who will be 80 years old should be the person Democrats should have as their presidential candidate,” Davis said.
The latest CNN poll showed Biden, who would also be an octogenarian by the end of a four-year term, far ahead of the field with the support of 30 percent of Democratic voters.
Sanders sits in second place with 14 percent of Democratic supporters, having gained one point since the October CNN poll. Biden dropped three points in the two months since the last poll. O’Rourke saw a significant bump from October, gaining five points to leapfrog Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey to take third place.
Attempts to reach Sanders for an interview were unsuccessful. He declined to comment on O’Rourke’s presidential prospects during an appearance on Fox News last week. “I think it is a little bit premature. We’ve got a little bit of time left before that,” he said.
Sanders and others are expected to make their presidential aspirations known early next year.
O’Rourke’s upsurge has led Sanders supporters to question the Texan’s progressive credentials, focusing on his lack of support for Medicare for All and failure to embrace the Green New Deal.
“All we’re saying is, can we pause? Can we have a primary? Or can we look under the hood a little bit before saying he’s the choice?” Melissa Byrne, who helped run Sander’s digital operations in 2016, said to BuzzFeed about the criticism of O’Rourke’s record.
Davis said Sanders’ third place finish in the MoveOn poll should be the most concerning to the Sanders campaign because it shows candidates are already splitting the progressive voters’ support and that this could only get worse for Sanders as more candidates become viable.
“It’s not just about O’Rourke. It’s about how will Kamala Harris do among voters. Democrats need the support of women and people of color,” Davis said, “I think she could be a formidable candidate moving forward.”
Galston said O’Rourke’s insurgency into Sanders’ base could be a result of a growing sense in the Democratic party to move away from nominating old white men in favor of younger voices. At 46 years old, O’Rourke is 31 years younger than Sanders, and 30 years younger than Biden.
“There is considerable debate within the party about the evidence of generational preference,” Galston said.
“I suppose it’s possible that a party that fell head-over-heels in love with Bernie Sanders, that they have decided he’s 30 years too old,” he added. “Maybe that happened, maybe it didn’t. We won’t know until they start voting.”
