Matt Flegenheimer and Jonathan Martin

What followed, generally, was conspicuous silence — and not just from her colleagues in Congress.

After sidestepping the explosive issue of impeachment for months by citing the inquiry by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, most of the other 17 Democratic presidential candidates have responded to the special counsel’s report with tentative remarks about impeaching Trump, demands for the unredacted Mueller findings, calls for further hearings or attempts to simply change the subject.

Anything, that is, to avoid clearly answering the question of whether lawmakers should remove the president from office.

Underpinning the candidates’ calculations are complex sets of short- and long-term incentives. Democratic hopefuls could receive a fundraising boost by embracing impeachment and energizing liberal donors. But some strategists and lawmakers say that a failed effort would only strengthen Trump’s re-election chances, allowing him to claim further vindication.

And many of the candidates, facing a Democratic electorate appalled by Trump and eager to see him out of office, are weighing whether to risk alienating some progressives by staying silent or to call for impeachment and create a divide with top Democrats in Washington who oppose it.

For now, according to interviews with multiple Democratic campaign officials, most of the candidates feel no pressure to demand Trump’s impeachment because they simply do not hear a mass clamoring for it on the campaign trail. And in their polling, impeachment is not a top priority for the party’s voters, who say they are more motivated by defeating Trump in 2020 and seeing their desired policy agenda put in place.

The Democratic contenders see the Mueller report mostly as a way to build their fundraising and supporter lists and, ultimately, as a 448-page blunt instrument best used for thwacking the president in next year’s campaign for his behavior.

Indeed, many candidates signaled this weekend that they had no plans to lead a charge for impeachment — Warren’s campaign hastened to note she would remain focused on her policy platform — and would instead defer to House Democrats.

At least two prominent contenders, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, equivocated on how to proceed even as they acknowledged that they personally believed the president probably should be impeached.

“I’m pretty sure he deserves to be,” Buttigieg said while campaigning in Londonderry, New Hampshire. “But Congress will have to figure procedurally what to do.”

“I wouldn’t blame any member of the House for voting for this,” O’Rourke said during an appearance in Nashua, New Hampshire. He supported impeachment as a Senate candidate last year, but now suggests that the issue would be best resolved by the voters in November 2020.

This measured response is partly a function of timing. Party activists have absorbed accounts of Trump’s aberrant behavior for nearly four years, dating to the start of his presidential bid. As a result, Mueller’s report packed less shock value for Democrats who did not need his imprimatur to believe that Trump’s actions rise to the level of impeachable as well as criminal offenses.

And for progressives who closely follow politics, the presidential race is well underway and the defeat of Trump is, they hope, just around the corner. Polls show that while a majority of Democrats still favor impeachment, support has waned in recent months as liberals move closer to a plausible end to the Trump presidency without congressional intervention.

Many Democratic voters are also as cleareyed as their elected leaders about the Republican Party’s wide-scale deference to Trump — and the implausibility of congressional Republicans aiding his ouster. The country is far more polarized now than it was when President Richard Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment, and Republican lawmakers today fear the wrath of Trump and his loyal supporters far more than they do any punishment from a dwindling band of swing voters.

A few Republicans did respond to the report with alarm, most notably Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who said he was “sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection” by the president and some in his circle. But the nonchalant reaction from the vast majority of Trump’s party only reinforced to many Democratic activists that impeachment would be fruitless.

“It galvanizes Trump supporters,” said Larry Drake, chairman of the Rockingham County Democrats in New Hampshire, adding that he was quite certain that the president had committed impeachable offenses. “If he’s not convicted in the Senate, he can say, ‘Look, I was right! This was just a witch hunt.’”

Drake has encountered fierce dissent from the pro-impeachment side in his own home. “My wife and I have been having a dialogue about this,” he said. “I guess that would be the nice way to put it.”

Other Democrats say the party is making the matter more complicated than it needs to be, insisting that an impeachment case makes both civic and political sense.

The civic argument: If lawmakers truly believe Trump deserves impeachment, how can political fears be allowed to override constitutional duties?

The political one: The party can do more than one thing at a time. Candidates can campaign on other issues, as Warren says she will continue doing, while congressional Democrats build on Mueller’s findings. Besides, supporters of impeachment ask, why is anyone so sure that Trump would benefit from the public flogging of impeachment hearings during a campaign?

“We reinforce his Teflon-ness by buying into this,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a former senior aide to Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. “Whether or not he’s Teflon is up to you, as a member of Congress.”

Palmieri said Democrats had learned the wrong lessons from past episodes like the Republican push to impeach President Bill Clinton, which is thought to have hampered Republicans’ midterm performance in 1998 amid voter concerns about investigative overreach.

“They look to the past, but you’ve got to look to the moment you’re in. And look at the moment we’re in,” Palmieri said of fellow Democrats. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you stop pursuing what Mueller is putting in front of them, of course voters aren’t going to think it’s important. Voters respond to leadership.”

And as Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee observed, Trump’s 2020 campaign message will most likely be centered on incendiary attacks on the Democrats’ policy and identity more than on their efforts to hold him accountable.

“Trump will have his team stoke on socialism or the ‘ism’ of the day, and impeachment will not be the siren needed to rally the base,” said Cohen, a Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee.

But Democrats in Washington are perhaps even more divided on the subject than the candidates for president are. While some progressive newcomers, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have called for impeachment proceedings, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others in leadership have signaled a strong aversion, often echoed in the rank-and-file.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., said an impeachment effort would only help Trump’s cause and fuel his supporters’ feelings of grievance, without especially benefiting Democrats.

“If we impeach Donald Trump, he would never be convicted in the Senate,” Cleaver said, referring to the Republican-held chamber’s role in an impeachment process. “And he would be able to campaign all around the country saying, ‘I’ve been acquitted!’”

For some Democratic primary contenders, the demands may be different, reflecting the political realities of trying to establish a foothold in what is an 18-person field. In addition to Warren, former Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio told CNN on Friday that initiating impeachment proceedings would be “perfectly reasonable.”

The willingness of both contenders to support impeachment hearings amounts to a refusal to engage in the political gymnastics of their rivals — but also highlights the urgency they feel about their own campaigns.

Castro has struggled to gain ground and is still working to attract enough individual donors to qualify for the first Democratic debate in June. Warren has remained in the middle of the pack despite entering the race before any other major candidate and unveiling an array of ambitious policy proposals.

Warren has also sought to distinguish herself by refusing, at least in the primary, to appeal to major donors. This has increased pressure on her to raise money online from small-dollar givers.

And in the hours after she announced her support for impeachment, she made the most of it, appearing on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, the preferred programming of Mueller-minded Democrats, and posting a clip of it on her social media accounts.

By midday Saturday, Warren had promoted her new stance on Instagram three times in less than 24 hours, adding a video clip from an appearance in Keene, New Hampshire, earlier that day. “There are some things that are bigger than politics,” she told the crowd there, to cheers. “This is one of them.”

But elsewhere on the trail, the Mueller report was little discussed. Campaigning in South Carolina after the document’s release, Sen. Bernie Sanders held forth largely on affordable housing and the consequences of gentrification.

At last, on Saturday morning, Sanders posted a video targeting Trump on Twitter — for breaking promises to manufacturing workers in the industrial Midwest.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/us/politics/democrats-impeachment-2020.html" id="c750a91b-685e-3eac-a302-71163318cbf6">The New York Times</a>.

How 2020 Democrats Are Gaming Out Trump Impeachment Quandary

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has worked for months to find traction in a crowded Democratic presidential primary, stepped forward Friday with a call to arms: President Donald Trump must be impeached.

This measured response is partly a function of timing. Party activists have absorbed accounts of Trump’s aberrant behavior for nearly four years now, dating to the start of his presidential bid. As a result, Mueller’s report packed less shock value for Democrats who did not need his imprimatur to believe that Trump’s actions rise to the level of impeachable as well as criminal offenses.

For some Democratic primary contenders, the demands may be different, reflecting the political realities of trying to establish a foothold in what is an 18-person field. In addition to Warren, former Mayor Julián Castro told CNN on Friday that initiating impeachment proceedings would be “perfectly reasonable.”

His decision jolts an early election season already stuffed with contenders, adding to the mix a relentless campaigner with a small-dollar fundraising army, the performative instincts of a former punk rocker and a pro-immigrant vision to counteract President Donald Trump’s.

Yet O’Rourke also comes to the 2020 race with few notable legislative accomplishments after three terms in the House representing El Paso. And in a primary so far defined by bedrock policy positions, like the economic agendas of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, O’Rourke enters without a signature proposal that might serve as the ideological anchor of his bid.

“This moment of peril produces perhaps the greatest moment of promise for this country and for everyone inside it,” O’Rourke said in a video announcing his candidacy, released hours before a three-day tour of Iowa began Thursday morning.

Shortly after 8 a.m. Thursday, O’Rourke stepped into a coffee shop on Main Street in Keokuk and began introducing himself to a state he had never visited before.

“Hey, nice to meet you. Beto O’Rourke,” he said, squeezing between news cameras and caffeine-seekers. “Good morning, good morning to you,” he said to people in this southeastern Iowa town — a county where Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 16 percentage points in 2016 but where former President Barack Obama won four years earlier.

Soon, he was standing on a chair taking questions, perched between paintings of flowers and musical instruments. “This is democracy,” he said.

O’Rourke was planning to spend much of the next three days in similar communities across eastern Iowa, the historically Democratic part of the state where so many voters swung to Trump three years ago.

His Democratic rivals quickly sent notice, however, that they were not going to let his long-anticipated launch go unimpeded: former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro released a list of 30 new endorsements from Texas, including one state lawmaker from O’Rourke’s hometown, and Sen. Kamala Harris emailed a fundraising appeal noting O’Rourke’s entry into the race — and the historic diversity in the field, which she represents.

And Trump also swiftly weighed in, using a photo opportunity in the Oval Office to ridicule O’Rourke’s gesticulations.

“I think he’s got a lot of hand movement,'’ the president said. “I’ve never seen so much hand movement. I said, ‘Is he crazy or is that just the way he acts?'”

Unlike many of his 14 Democratic rivals for the nomination, O’Rourke has spent little time until recently even considering a White House run, let alone building an operation that would sustain one. Some voters and activists have also wondered aloud if a white male is the best fit for this Democratic moment, particularly after midterm successes powered often by female and nonwhite candidates.

With O’Rourke’s entry, the primary field appears close to settled more than 10 months before the Iowa caucuses; former Vice President Joe Biden, the only holdout among the expected major candidates, seems poised to join the race next month.

Early polls have shown Biden and Sanders on top. O’Rourke, three decades their junior, hopes to supply an unsubtle contrast, particularly given Sanders’ success with the kinds of young voters who flocked to O’Rourke in Texas.

Advisers to other Democratic candidates have watched O’Rourke’s plans with concern, recognizing that the kind of face-to-face politicking that fueled his campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas should suit him well in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire, where voters crave personal interaction with candidates.

O’Rourke made his town hall forums the centerpiece of his Senate candidacy, turning the race into a national cause — the underdog liberal running in a famously red state — trailed by a documentary film crew and endorsed by celebrities from Beyoncé to Willie Nelson. He made a point of visiting each of the 254 counties in Texas, helping him bulldoze fundraising records and come within about 200,000 votes of Cruz on Election Day.

O’Rourke also attracted many fans outside the state, drawing them into a perpetual social media live-stream capturing not only his political events but also unscripted moments on the road: late-night burger stops, skateboarding in a parking lot, reminiscing with a former bandmate behind the wheel. For many politically obsessed liberals, his inevitably upbeat musings offered a welcome online antidote to Trump’s Twitter rampaging. On the eve of his announcement, Vanity Fair released a cover story on O’Rourke with photographs by Annie Leibovitz.

Admirers believe it is this ability to generate his own narrative orbit that could separate him from his peers.

“In a political environment where it’s so hard to break through, he has an ability to pique people’s interest and to drive a narrative on his own,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and is not advising any candidate in 2020. “He isn’t just shadowboxing with the president’s Twitter handle.”

On one central issue, though, Trump has provided O’Rourke with a useful foil. Earlier this year, when the president traveled to El Paso to press for a wall on the border with Mexico, the two headlined dueling rallies. “We are not safe because of walls but in spite of walls,” O’Rourke thundered, speaking to supporters not far from Trump’s event. “We have so much to give, so much to show the rest of the country.”

Subsequently, he even said he would support tearing down the existing border wall in the El Paso area, a declaration that Republicans have suggested they will use against him should he make the general election.

O’Rourke highlighted his immigration stance in his video announcement Thursday, saying, “All of us, wherever you live, can acknowledge that if immigration is a problem, it’s the best possible problem for this country to have.”

But the Democratic primary could present unique challenges to O’Rourke.

It is an open question whether he will be able to scale up his skeletal organization and hand over control to the sort of political professionals he largely shunned in his Senate race. The lead-up to O’Rourke’s official announcement Thursday has been highly improvisational, in part because he was personally directing much of the planning.

On Wednesday night, he was texting supporters in early nominating states to share his plans and to tell them he would have advisers get in touch with them about his schedule. And for weeks, he has been meeting and talking on the telephone with a number of Democratic strategists to gauge their interest in working for him, finding encouragement but also a reluctance to move to El Paso, where he is planning to base his operations.

O’Rourke discussed the campaign manager job for 90 minutes with one strategist, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, but even on the eve of his announcement, it was uncertain who would be at the helm of his organization.

Yet he enjoys the support of many of former President Barack Obama’s aides, some tacitly and others more full-throated, and he has relied on advice from a number of Obama’s strategists, including the 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe. (Plouffe is not, however, planning to formally participate in the race on behalf of any candidate.)

But unlike Obama, who ran in a year when the Iraq War was the single overriding policy issue in the Democratic race, O’Rourke is seeking the presidency at a moment his party is lurching left on issues across the board. He will be immediately under pressure to expand upon the sometimes-vague liberalism that has colored his public life.

Already, allies of Sanders in particular have questioned O’Rourke’s commitment to progressive priorities. (O’Rourke has declined to call himself a progressive, saying he was “not big on labels.”)

In 2016, he supported a centrist challenger to Nancy Pelosi to lead House Democrats. In 2018, he frustrated Texas activists by refusing to endorse Gina Ortiz Jones, a prized Democratic recruit for a House seat, because she was facing O’Rourke’s Republican friend, Rep. Will Hurd, who eventually won by fewer than 1,000 votes.

O’Rourke should have little trouble pulling in enough money to get a presidential campaign off the ground, though it is possible that much of his fundraising success in 2018 owed to his opponent, Cruz, whom liberals love to loathe.

Some in the party have questioned whether a Senate-race-losing candidate should even be running for president so soon. Senate Democrats aggressively lobbed him to take on Texas’ other Republican senator, John Cornyn, who is up for re-election next year, even dispatching senior party officials to El Paso to make the case.

In the months since his defeat, O’Rourke himself seemed to be casting about for answers, discussing a possible run with advisers but appearing genuinely conflicted.

As part of his decision-making process, he set off on a solo road trip to meet Americans in unrehearsed settings, describing the effort in a series of confessional online essays.

“Have been stuck lately. In and out of a funk,” O’Rourke wrote in one. “Maybe if I get moving, on the road, meet people, learn about what’s going on where they live, have some adventure, go where I don’t know and I’m not known, it’ll clear my head.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/politics/beto-o-rourke-president.html" id="81c31cf0-5531-392c-a7ad-964b4dc52d12">The New York Times</a>.

Beto O'Rourke Enters the 2020 Presidential Campaign

KEOKUK, Iowa — Beto O’Rourke, the 46-year-old former Texas congressman whose near-miss Senate run last year propelled him to Democratic stardom, announced Thursday that he was running for president, betting that a broad message of national unity and generational change will lift him above a slate of committed progressives offering big-ticket policy ideas.

Yet O’Rourke also comes to the 2020 race with few notable legislative accomplishments after three terms in the House representing El Paso. And in a primary so far defined by big-ticket policy ideas, like the economic agendas of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, O’Rourke enters without a signature proposal that might serve as the ideological anchor of his bid.

“This moment of peril produces perhaps the greatest moment of promise for this country and for everyone inside it,” O’Rourke said in a video announcing his candidacy.

Advisers to O’Rourke’s competitors have long watched his plans with concern, recognizing that the kind of face-to-face politicking that fueled his campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas should suit him well in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire, where voters crave personal interaction with candidates.

O’Rourke also attracted many fans outside the state, drawing them into a perpetual social media live-stream capturing not only his political events but also unscripted moments on the road: late-night burger stops, skateboarding in a parking lot, reminiscing with a former bandmate behind the wheel. For many politically obsessed liberals, his inevitably upbeat musings offered a welcome online antidote to Trump’s Twitter rampaging.

“In a political environment where it’s so hard to break through, he has an ability to pique people’s interest and to drive a narrative on his own,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “He isn’t just shadowboxing with the president’s Twitter handle.”

“All of us, wherever you live, can acknowledge that if immigration is a problem, it’s the best possible problem for this country to have,” O’Rourke said in his video announcement Thursday.

Trump, in turn, has taunted O’Rourke for turning a losing campaign into a launchpad for a presidential bid. “Hey, you’re supposed to win in order to run,” Trump has said.

On Wednesday night, he was texting supporters in early nominating states to share his plans and to tell them he would have advisers get in touch with them about his upcoming schedule. And for weeks, he has been meeting and talking on the telephone with a number of Democratic strategists to gauge their interest in working for him, finding encouragement but also a reluctance to move to El Paso, where he is planning to base his operations.

As late as last weekend, O’Rourke had still not settled on who would guide his campaign. He discussed the campaign manager job for 90 minutes with a Democratic strategist, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, but even on the eve of his announcement, it was uncertain who would be at the helm of his organization.

But unlike Obama, who ran in a year when the Iraq war was the single overriding policy issue in the Democratic race, O’Rourke is seeking the presidency at a moment his party is lurching left across the board. He will be immediately under pressure to expand upon the sometimes-vague liberalism that has colored his public life.

And while O’Rourke should have little trouble pulling in enough money to get a presidential campaign off the ground, it is not clear precisely how he will fare in fundraising in such a large field of Democrats, without a binary contest against Cruz, whom liberals love to loathe.

Some in the party have questioned whether a Senate-race-losing candidate like O’Rourke should even be running for president so soon. Several have encouraged him to seek statewide office again; Senate Democrats aggressively lobbed him to take on Texas’ other Republican senator, John Cornyn, who is up for re-election next year, even dispatching senior party officials to El Paso to make the case.

His goal, people close to him say, is to build a presidential campaign consistent with the spirit of his Senate run, when he gleefully swore off consultants and pollsters while leaning on a sprawling voter mobilization network aimed at turning out Texans who rarely make it to the polls.

In recent weeks, O’Rourke has visited several college campuses, a likely nod to an often inconsistent voting segment — younger voters — that he hopes to draw into his coalition.

As part of his decision-making process, he also set off on a solo road trip to meet Americans in unrehearsed settings, describing the effort in a series of confessional online essays.

Beto O’Rourke, the 46-year-old former Texas congressman whose near-miss Senate run last year propelled him to Democratic stardom, announced his candidacy for president Thursday, betting that voters will prize his message of national unity and generational change in a 2020 primary teeming with committed progressives.

“Doesn’t he remind you of Kennedy?” Martinez said as O’Rourke offered firm handshakes and music recommendations to a coffeehouse crowd. “He’s young. That’s what it’s going to take to try and beat Trump.”

Some closer to O’Rourke’s age were less convinced. Standing near the back, Erin Cruz, 41, sized up O’Rourke — and then praised septuagenarian socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“I’m looking for someone to be as progressive as Bernie,” Cruz said, tugging on a Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt.

Actually, she amended, perhaps just Bernie himself.

O’Rourke entered the Democratic primary race this past week with an aspirational pitch and a semi-improvisational tour of Iowa, with a Hawkeyes baseball cap and bilingual profanity on the stump, broadcasting his message of generational uplift and immediately thrusting age into the main currents of the 2020 race.

The contenders leading in initial polls, Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, will be 79 and 78 by Inauguration Day 2021. President Donald Trump will be 74.

Yet as party activists begin to appraise the field, they are already grappling with whether to once again embrace a younger candidate who reflects the future or shrug off age and elevate a veteran politician who most clearly represents their simultaneous craving for undiluted liberalism and someone who can thwart Trump.

If history is a guide, O’Rourke and other Democrats betting on a youthful appeal — like Cory Booker, 49; JuliánCastro, 44; or Pete Buttigieg and Tulsi Gabbard, both 37 — should have an advantage. Of the last five Democratic presidents, only Lyndon B. Johnson, who ascended to the job because of the assassination of a 46-year-old president, was older than 52 when he was first elected president. The roster of Democratic losers in modern times is littered with nominees who were neither young nor new to the political scene.

But for many in the party, dedication to this critical component of past success — putting forward a new face — is being tested in the 2020 race by twin impulses: the devotion to Sanders among voters many decades younger than him, who share his belief that American society is rife with inequities that will not be solved by candidates like O’Rourke, and an overriding desire among Democrats to defeat a president they believe is a menace to democracy.

Supporters of Sanders believe he offers transformational change — the promise of not merely ousting Trump but also remaking the country into a more just place — and brings experience that would help him survive a general election and expand the electorate.

At the same time, moderates in the party are tempted by Biden, wagering that the political equivalent of comfort food to America may prove the safest recipe.

This combination of a primary electorate that is at once hungry for structural, even radical, reform and deeply nervous about nominating someone too callow to defeat Trump poses perhaps the most serious challenge to a candidate like O’Rourke. He shuns ideological labels, even chafing at “progressive” in the past; often avoids being pinned down on policy; and has no experience in the crucible of presidential politics.

“I know Bernie has a laid-out plan for Medicare and free tuition,” said Austin Palmer, 25, a South Carolinian who went to see Sanders vow political revolution Thursday night in North Charleston. “Beto has made some broad statements so far.”

Palmer invoked the recent scandal involving parents committing bribery to get their children into elite colleges, shaking his head at what he sees as a rotten society that must be razed, not reformed. Yet he also indicated that he was most enthusiastic about Sanders because of the polls he recalls showing that the Democrats’ 2016 runner-up would have defeated Trump.

“I’m really concerned about being able to beat Trump,” he said. “That’s my big worry.”

O’Rourke has ample time to flesh out his agenda — he spoke fondly, if not always specifically, this past week of “bold, progressive ideas” — and he enjoys considerable assets: a history of record-shattering online fundraising, the appeal of celebrity in a country besotted by fame and a grip on the imagination of a party that loves to fall in love after his star-making-if-campaign-losing Senate race in Texas.

But he is facing a 2020 campaign and election that differ considerably from when Democrats last rewarded a generational argument in a presidential race by nominating then-Sen. Barack Obama.

“There’s still a big part of the party that wants to fall in love, and there’s another part of the party that will settle for anything that will beat Trump,” said Sen. Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, at 45 the youngest Democratic senator. “I think that’s a real, daily tension in the party that’s going to play out in real time.”

There could ultimately be a best-of-both-worlds solution — “It just happened that in 2008 and 2012 we fell in love with the most electable candidate,” Murphy recalled — but like many Democrats, he could only guess for now.

“I would generally make the case that the Democratic Party should always be nominating the next-generation candidate,” he said, “except I’m not sure any of the old rules apply.”

The evidence was conflicting at Sanders’ South Carolina rally Thursday.

As unfathomable as it may be to the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, many in attendance made the case for Sanders as much on his electability as his liberal platform.

“I want to support someone who I think really has a chance of winning,” said Brandon Greene, 27, a student and pastor. “We can’t take a gamble on a new candidate.”

And Tasha Horton, 45, a real estate broker with college-age children who “love the Bern,” allowed that her “love is for Kamala but strategically it’s either Bernie or Biden.”

Horton, who went to the same church gymnasium recently to see Sen. Kamala Harris, 54, added: “We have to think that way. You can’t think with your heart.”

Yet even as Greene and Horton, who are both African-American, made the case for Sanders, the bulk of the audience reflected limits in his appeal: In a city where nearly half of the population is black, the rally attendees were overwhelmingly white. As a soloist sang gospel music that doubled as a filibuster for the tardy senator, some in the crowd noodled as if it were a Phish jam rather than an organ-backed hymn about joy coming in the morning.

Many of the voters at the Sanders event said they were open to other candidates; they just wanted to hear “about specifics,” as Greene put it, and be convinced that a younger alternative could prove viable.

Still, as Sanders took the stage and thundered against economic inequality, excoriating the compensation packages of individual health care executives, the contrast between his unsparing indictment and comprehensive agenda and O’Rourke’s frequent generalities could not have been starker.

“I want to do something that very few public figures will do, and I want to tell you exactly what justice means to me and I hope to you,” the senator told his youthful, sign-waving charges.

In Iowa, meanwhile, the newest candidate in the race was casting his political worldview as a kind of high-minded pragmatism, describing bipartisanship as a necessity during his six years in the House minority.

“I made it my mission to ensure that the perfect never becomes the enemy of the good,” O’Rourke said to cheers in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, boasting of a veterans’ health care measure signed into law by Trump.

He frames his events as two-sided conversations, at times prodding voters to say how they might solve the challenges they cite. “Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Advice?” he asked high school students in Fort Madison.

When pressed, by voters and reporters, for more details, O’Rourke has equivocated or vacillated on several policy questions. Asked about health care at the first of eight events Thursday, O’Rourke steered clear of “Medicare for all,” the progressive proposal he once endorsed without apparent reservation, calling more generally for a “guaranteed, high-quality” system instead.

“I think that’s one of the ways to ensure that we get to guaranteed, high-quality health care for every single American,” he said of “Medicare for all” in Washington, Iowa. “I’m no longer sure that that’s the fastest way to get there.”

Asked at another event about reparations, a growing issue in the Democratic race, O’Rourke held forth for four minutes — on John Lewis, Martin Luther King, the arc of systemic racism — without answering the question of where he stood.

But O’Rourke’s lack of detail does not dissuade his most ardent supporters. As with Obama’s, the Texan’s admirers are galvanized by a message that, with leadership that can bring people of good will together across party lines, a better day for the country awaits.

“Trump appeals to the worst of America, candidates like Beto appeal to the best of America,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, 48, a Democratic leader who may become the first Generation X House speaker someday and has not backed anyone in the race.

Across eastern Iowa, O’Rourke encountered many young people excited by his candidacy, arriving in T-shirts from his Senate race or, in one case, a customized “Betomania” button featuring the candidate with a guitar.

“Everything about him is an inspiration,” said Angela Scott, 27, after meeting (and high-fiving) O’Rourke at a sub shop in Burlington, Iowa. “You can’t help but like that man.”

In other moments, though, his audiences included a striking dichotomy: enchanted older voters, convinced that younger voters would flock to O’Rourke and rescue the party from Trump, and younger voters excited by someone else.

As O’Rourke spoke in Mount Pleasant, standing on a cafe counter, a cluster of teenage fans of Sanders watched in the wings, curious about O’Rourke but unmoved by any suggestion that Sanders is not a man for the times.

“That’s ageism,” said Garrick Dodson, a self-described socialist progressive who will turn 18 next month. “I don’t have a problem voting for an old person I agree with more than a young person.”

Dodson and his friends suggested that their elders underestimated the boiling anger of the teen and 20-something generation, aghast at what they see as their forebears’ indifference to climate change and student loan debt.

“Gen Z is coming,” warned a peer, Madison Brady, 18. “We’re so angry.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/us/politics/beto-bernie-sanders-age.html" id="6b9d7fa1-b852-3a2d-a744-7337409c2d67">The New York Times</a>.

KEOKUK, Iowa — Diana Martinez, 70, looked at Beto O’Rourke, 46, and made her choice: It was time for Generation X to fix this country.

With Candidates From 37 to 77, Does Age Matter to Democrats?

Yet O’Rourke also comes to the 2020 race with few notable legislative accomplishments after three terms in the House representing El Paso, Texas. And in a primary so far defined by bedrock policy positions, like the economic agendas of Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., O’Rourke enters without a signature proposal that might serve as the ideological anchor of his bid.

“Hey, nice to meet you. Beto O’Rourke,” he said, squeezing between news cameras and caffeine-seekers. “Good morning, good morning to you,” he said to people in the southeastern Iowa town of Keokuk — a county where Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 16 percentage points in 2016 but where former President Barack Obama won four years earlier.

O’Rourke was planning on spending much of the next three days in similar communities across eastern Iowa, the historically Democratic part of the state where so many voters swung to Trump three years ago.

His Democratic rivals quickly sent notice, however, that they were not going to let his long-anticipated launch go unimpeded: Former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro released a list of 30 new endorsements from Texas, including one state lawmaker from O’Rourke’s hometown, and Sens. Sanders, Warren and Kamala Harris, D-Calif., emailed a fundraising appeals noting O’Rourke’s entry into the race — with Harris citing the historic diversity in the field, which she represents.

“I think he’s got a lot of hand movement,” the president said. “I’ve never seen so much hand movement. I said, ‘Is he crazy or is that just the way he acts?''’

Advisers to other Democratic candidates have watched O’Rourke’s plans with concern, recognizing that the kind of face-to-face politicking that fueled his campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, should suit him well in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire, where voters crave personal interaction with candidates.

O’Rourke also attracted many fans outside the state, drawing them into a perpetual social media livestream capturing not only his political events but unscripted moments on the road: late-night burger stops, skateboarding in a parking lot, reminiscing with a former bandmate behind the wheel. For many politically obsessed liberals, his inevitably upbeat musings offered a welcome online antidote to Trump’s Twitter rampaging. On the eve of his announcement, Vanity Fair released a cover story on O’Rourke with photographs by Annie Leibovitz.

Yet his boast in that interview — “I’m just born to do this” — and off-the-cuff comments he made Thursday about only sporadically helping his wife raise their children, quickly drew criticism and illustrated the peril of taking his unplugged style to the crucible of a presidential race.

Admirers, however, believe it is this ability to generate his own narrative orbit that could separate him from his peers.

“In a political environment where it’s so hard to break through, he has an ability to pique people’s interest and to drive a narrative on his own,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and is not advising any candidate in 2020. “He isn’t just shadowboxing with the president’s Twitter handle.”

Subsequently, he even said he would support tearing down the existing border wall in the El Paso area, a declaration Republicans have suggested they will use against him should he make the general election.

O’Rourke discussed the campaign manager job for 90 minutes with one strategist, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, but even on the eve of his announcement it was uncertain who would be at the helm of his organization.

Some in the party have questioned whether a Senate-race-losing candidate should even be running for president so soon. Senate Democrats aggressively lobbied him to take on Texas’ other Republican senator, John Cornyn.

In the months since his defeat, O’Rourke himself seemed to be casting about for answers, discussing a possible run with advisers but appearing genuinely conflicted — seeking clarity at one point by making a solo road trip to meet Americans in unrehearsed settings.

On Thursday, any lingering apprehension was well concealed.

“This is the moment,” he said, standing atop a coffeehouse counter in Burlington, hands flying, “for the leadership of the indispensable country.”

He left little doubt which leader he had in mind for the top job.

BURLINGTON, Iowa — Beto O’Rourke, the 46-year-old former Texas congressman whose near-miss Senate run last year propelled him to Democratic stardom, announced on Thursday that he was running for president, betting that a broad message of national unity and generational change will lift him above a slate of committed progressives offering big-ticket policy ideas.

“This moment of peril produces perhaps the greatest moment of promise for this country and for everyone inside it,” O’Rourke said in a video announcing his candidacy, released hours before a planned three-day tour of Iowa was set to begin on Thursday morning.

But unlike Obama, who ran in a year when the Iraq War was the single overriding policy issue in the Democratic race, O’Rourke is seeking the presidency at a moment his party is lurching left across the board. He will be immediately under pressure to expand upon the sometimes-vague liberalism that has colored his public life.

Beto O’Rourke, the 46-year-old former Texas congressman whose near-miss Senate run last year propelled him to Democratic stardom, announced Thursday that he was running for president, betting that voters will prize his message of national unity and generational change in a 2020 primary teeming with committed progressives.

His Democratic rivals quickly sent notice, however, that they were not going to let his long-anticipated launch go unimpeded: former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro released a list of 30 new endorsements from Texas, including one state lawmaker from O’Rourke’s hometown, and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., emailed a fundraising appeal noting O’Rourke’s entry into the race — and the historic diversity in the field, which she represents.

“I think he’s got a lot of hand movement,'’ the president said. “I’ve never seen so much hand movement. I said, ‘Is he crazy or is that just the way he acts?''’

O’Rourke highlighted his immigration stance in his video announcement Thursday, saying, “All of us, wherever you live, can acknowledge that if immigration is a problem it’s the best possible problem for this country to have.'’

Some in the party have questioned whether a Senate-race-losing candidate should even be running for president so soon. Senate Democrats aggressively lobbied him to take on Texas’ other Republican senator, John Cornyn, who is up for re-election next year, even dispatching senior party officials to El Paso to make the case.

KEOKUK, Iowa — Beto O’Rourke, the 46-year-old former Texas congressman whose near-miss Senate run last year propelled him to Democratic stardom, announced on Thursday that he was running for president, betting that a broad message of national unity and generational change will lift him above a slate of committed progressives offering big-ticket policy ideas.

“I’m looking for someone to be as progressive as Bernie,” Cruz said.

O’Rourke entered the Democratic primary race this past week with an aspirational pitch and a semi-improvisational tour of Iowa, broadcasting his message of generational uplift and immediately thrusting age into the main currents of the 2020 race.

Yet as party activists begin to appraise the field, they are grappling with whether to once again embrace a younger candidate who reflects the future or shrug off age and elevate a veteran politician who most clearly represents their simultaneous craving for undiluted liberalism and someone who can thwart Trump.

If history is a guide, O’Rourke and other Democrats betting on a youthful appeal — like Cory Booker, 49; JuliánCastro, 44; or Pete Buttigieg and Tulsi Gabbard, both 37 — should have an advantage. Of the last five Democratic presidents, only Lyndon B. Johnson, who ascended to the job because of the assassination of a 46-year-old president, was older than 52 when he was first elected president.

But for many in the party, dedication to this critical component of past success — putting forward a new face — is being tested in the 2020 race by twin impulses: the devotion to Sanders among voters many decades younger than him, and an overriding desire among Democrats to defeat the president. Supporters of Sanders believe he offers transformational change — the promise of not merely ousting Trump but also remaking the country into a more just place.

At the same time, moderates in the party are tempted by Biden, wagering that political comfort food may prove the safest recipe. This combination of a primary electorate that is at once hungry for reform and nervous about nominating someone too callow to defeat Trump poses perhaps the most serious challenge to a candidate like O’Rourke.

With candidates from 37 to 77, does age matter to democrats

With candidates from 37 to 77, does age matter to Democrats?

<h1>BURLINGTON, Iowa — Beto O’Rourke, the 46-year-old former Texas congressman whose near-miss Senate run last year propelled him to Democratic stardom, announced on Thursday that he was running for president, betting that a broad message of national unity and generational change will lift him above a slate of committed progressives offering big-ticket policy ideas.</h1>

O’Rourke was planning on spending much of the next three days in similar communities across eastern Iowa, the historically Democratic part of the state where so many voters swung to Trump three years ago. Keeping with the do-it-yourself spirit of his Senate race, the new candidate did not release a full schedule of stops. Details of his appearances spread by social media and word of mouth.

Unlike many of his 14 Democratic rivals for the nomination, O’Rourke has spent little time until recently even considering a White House run, let alone building an operation that would sustain one. Some voters and activists have also wondered aloud if a white man is the best fit for this Democratic moment, particularly after midterm successes powered often by female and nonwhite candidates.

On one central issue, though, Trump has provided O’Rourke with a useful foil. This year, when the president traveled to El Paso to press for a wall on the border with Mexico, the two headlined dueling rallies.

Yet he enjoys the support of many of Obama’s aides, some tacitly and others more full-throated, and he has relied on advice from a number of Obama’s strategists, including the 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe. (Plouffe is not, however, planning to formally participate in the race on behalf of any candidate.)

O’Rourke should have little trouble pulling in enough money to get a presidential campaign off the ground, though it is possible that some of his fundraising success in 2018 owed to his opponent, Cruz, whom liberals love to loathe.

This article originally appeared in <a id="975bb3ce-9e4f-45d6-a499-e3b2f73a59ee" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/politics/beto-o-rourke-president.html">The New York Times</a>.

In 'Moment of Promise,' O'Rourke Says He Will Run

Shortly after 8 a.m. Thursday, O’Rourke stepped into a coffee shop on Main Street in Keokuk and began introducing himself to a state he had never visited before.

Matt Flegenheimer and Jonathan Martin

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In 'moment of promise,' O'Rourke says he will run