On verge of crucial presidential test, Beto must explain why he is not running for Senate

Good day Austin:

With the first Democratic presidential debates coming up in two weeks, Beto O'Rourke is well in evidence in the national media - This Week with George Stephanopoulos on ABC Sunday, the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night, and Morning Joe this morning.

That's all good for O'Rourke. Most of the 23 candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination would gladly trade places with O'Rourke for those kind of bookings. But the context and tenor of the questioning is less good. It is why O'Rourke hasn't lived up to the potential he evidenced in his ultimately losing 2018 Senate campaign, and why he isn't doing something more sensible and achievable, like running for the Senate in Texas again. His current celebrity is based more on letdown than expectation.

COLBERT: Last time you were here, you were running for Senate in Texas, for people who don't remember, against Ted Cruz. And you did not win that one. Did not win that one. What made you go, "Okay, didn't get Senate, let's go for the brass ring and go for president." I say, very exciting campaign, but you did not win that one. Does this one seem easier to you?

O'ROURKE: Definitely not. You know, in Texas, we got to be something or be part of something just extraordinarily special. A state that had been 50th in voter turnout, so it wasn't a red state. It was a non-noting state. Turnout at record levels. Young voter turnout in early voting was up 500%. We won more votes than any Democrat has in history of the state of Texas.

COLBERT: Very close. 2.6% in Texas.

O'ROURKE: But we helped others win their races, Colin Allred, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, both Democrats replacing Republicans, helping flip the House of Representatives, 17 African- American women elected to judicial positions in Harris County, literally changing the face of criminal justice in that community. What I took from that is that we got to be part of a movement and a movement of people who were brought into our democracy, a democracy that has been badly broken, captured, corrupted by special interests and corporations. This grassroots people power campaign, didn't take a dime from a single PAC, represents the kind of movement that it will take to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. And then bring this country together again.

COLBERT: There are some polls. I'm sure you've seen that 60% of Texas Democrats want you to run against Senator Cornyn, because he's not particularly popular in Texas right now. And you have a chance of beating him, why not go for that? You already know how to run for Senate. Why gear up this other thing, instead of taking this next chop at Cornyn?

O'ROURKE: I just think given where we are,in this country, this moment of truth on everything that you could care about: Will we be up to the challenge of confronting climate change before it's too late? Will we be able to extend health care to every single American? Will we ensure that our democracy under attack by powers from without the country, under attack by our very president, can we say that? I want to be in the most consequential position to make sure that I do everything I can to deliver for this country. So I want to run to serve as president of the United States. And I want to do so in a way that brings people in, that fixes our democracy, that ensures that we're not defined by our differences, but instead by our ambitions and the work that we're willing to do in order to achieve them. So that's what has moved me and Amy and our family to make this decision.

And I'll say this for Texas. There are going to be some extraordinary candidates running to oppose John Cornyn, One, MJ Hegar, combat veteran and extraordinary candidate, if she's the nominee, she will defeat him. There are others who are running who may have just as good a chance.Texas is finally turning out. Our democracy works. We're going to have a Democrat representing that state in United States Senate after 2020.

From the Statesman's Matt Zdun:

Texas Democrats would prefer that Beto O'Rourke leave the 2020 presidential race and challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in 2020 instead, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll of Texas voters.

The poll released Wednesday showed that 60% of Democrats and those leaning Democratic preferred that O'Rourke challenge Cornyn while 27% wanted the former El Paso congressman to continue running for the Democratic nomination for president.

O'Rourke dismissed the results of the poll in an interview with CBS Wednesday.

"There will be some really wonderful candidates running against John Cornyn in the Democratic Primary," O'Rourke said. One candidate challenging Cornyn is MJ Hegar who narrowly lost to U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, last year. O'Rourke called her an "extraordinary candidate."

On Morning Joe, O'Rourke was questioned by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who have been merciless in their critique, even mocking, of him as a presidential candidate (they really like Mayor Pete Buttigieg), as well as by Willie Geist.

SCARBOROUGH: You've actually done exactly what I've seen a lot of great campaigners do. You kept your head down. You listen, you forget all the noise. Forget about the ground noise. And you just started going from one town hall meeting to another. You were knocking on doors. You're getting there, you didn't care whether the press following you or not. And you turn around like a month or two later. And some pretty incredible things are happening. And it's not reflecting yet possibly in all the polls, but we were talking about how Elizabeth Warren was doing all the right things three months ago, and we didn't realize, there's always a delayed reaction. Talk bout the changes that you've made your campaign and why you made it.

O'ROURKE: Yeah. I really feel like we've turned a corner and as you just suggested, really focused on the people who will decide this election. So Monday morning, 9am, we're hosting a town hall in Clinton, Iowa. Who shows up at 9am, on a Monday morning -- more than 120 people really focused on the issues that matter most to them. Why do my prescription medications costs so much? Why do my husband and I have to decide which one of us is going to take our prescription, because we don't have enough resources for both. Young people incredibly urgent on the issue of gun violence, and wondering why, when they go to school, they worry if they're going to come home from school that day, or confronting the challenge of climate in Iowa, you got it along the Missouri River, you got it along the Mississippi River both flooded at historic levels right now. And so listening to people, learning from them, and reflecting their urgency back on the campaign trail. And then I think importantly, frankly, being here, and answering your questions and being able to connect with a national audience that's not able to be at those town hall meetings, is critically important. And then the last thing, if we compliment all of that, with very bold, detailed policy proposals, and we just announced one, to ensure full human and civil rights for the LGBTQ community, (here's Matt Zdun on that). Weve done it for democracy, for immigration, for climate change, then you really understand in a very detailed way, just how this country can be different with my leadership as President.

BRZEZINSKI: So then the question is, why not run for Senate where you could really contribute given the poll numbers? Are you getting that question? And what's your answer?

O'ROURKE: My answer is that I want to do the greatest good for this country at our defining moment of truth. And the way that I campaigned for Senate last year, the way I served in Congress before that has always been about making this democracy work, holding town hall meetings, every single month, all comers welcome, no holds barred, running people, power campaigns, no PACS, no corporations, no special interests, going to every one of those 254 counties of Texas, and at the end of the day, winning more votes than any Democrat has ever won in Texas, winning independents for the first time in decades, picking up half a million disaffected Republicans who are looking for a new home, because Donald Trump has kicked them out of the home that they've had for so long. It's going to take that kind of movement to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. It's going to take that kind of movement to bring this country together again in 2021 around these historic set of challenges. And the fact that we did that in a red state, and the fact that at the moment that the president has trained our focus on the US Mexico border, that's where Amy and I are raising our three kids. And you can tell a very powerful, positive story about the contribution of immigrants and the fact that we don't have to be afraid of the rest of the world. I think those factors set me apart from this field, help me to defeat Donald Trump, which is job number one, and also help me to lead this country and bring us back together.

GEIST: So congressman, because of the extraordinary race that you did run, where you came with a whisker of beating a very famous Republican senator, in a red state, there were huge expectations for you coming into this race. You had a lot of national media attention, a lot of famous supporters, you were a star in the Democratic Party. So are you as surprised as some people that you sit at fifth or sixth in most national polls right now? And I'll take from you the caveat that it's early, because we all know that, right? But do you think you should be a little higher than you are?

O'ROURKE: Yeah, I think it reflects an extraordinary field of candidates. The greatest collection of people running for the presidency in the history of this country. You look at the diversity, diversity of background and biography, experience and expertise that's been brought to bear on this challenge of defeating Trump, but also of climate. of health care for all and making sure that college is affordable, or comprehensive immigration reform after 30 years of talking about it, I think is a very good problem to have. And as you alluded, I don't know that there's been a poll June, the year before the presidential election that has accurately predicted the outcome. Nor has there ever been a race in which I participated, including my first race for Congress in 2012, where we took on the incumbent, where the odds were where anyone thought we had any kind of chance. So I never listened to the polls before to make the decisions that are most important for my service to my country. I'll never look at a poll to decide what I believe or what I think we should be able to move on. And as president, I'm always going to look to people, not polls to make sure that this country does the right thing.

GEIST: So but in your heart of hearts, Congress, when you look at those numbers, do you say man, I ought to be a little higher than I am right now?

O'ROURKE: Who would not want to be doing better in a poll? Of course. Absolutely. And I hope that insofar as the polls are accurate, over time, they reflect the incredibly hard work that our team, this extraordinary group of volunteers on the ground in the states in which we're campaigning, are doing, That the doors that they're knocking on, the phone calls that they're making, the pop up offices that they're hosting, but our ultimate metric is these caucus commitments that we're getting in Iowa, these primary commitments that we're getting in New Hampshire, the relationships that we're building in South Carolina and Nevada, that at the end of the day is going to decide who is going to win those caucuses and those primaries. And that's what we're focused on-- executing an extraordinary ground game, premised on an amazing team of volunteers.

O'Rourke was asked about preparing for the debate.

O"ROURKE: We're gonna have 60 seconds to answer a question about the economy or foreign policy, or health care or the health of our democracy. So I'm doing my best with a an extraordinary team to make sure that I get across in one minute just who I am. What's different about me than the other contenders? And then the specific policy proposals that we would implement as president. That's a tall order to get in, in under 60 seconds, but I'm training every day, both in terms of the information that I take in, and in practicing responses that try to get at the heart of achieving those three objectives. In every single answer, we've got a great problem, we've got more than 20 people running to serve this country in the most consequential position of public trust, at the most defining moments in our history. So I'm grateful to be on the stage with this extraordinary field. I truly hope to distinguish myself based on my record, my ability of making this democracy work for everyone. And the fact that democracy is at the core of this campaign. Last week, we set out a bold set of democracy reform proposals, bringing 55 million new Americans into our democracy through automatic and same day voter registration, getting barriers out of the way with a new Voting Rights Act. So no more voter purges in Georgia and no more voter ID laws in Texas, and ending gerrymandering, ending political action committee contributions to federal elected officials, and then ending the perpetual reelection of members of Congress through term limits, and then having a paper trail for every ballot cast and full audits of our elections that restore faith in our democracy. Only by getting this democracy working. do you meet any other challenges for us right now.

O'Rourke then proceeded to demonstrate how he might mix it up on a debate stage with Joe Biden (if they end up on the same stage in a debate that will be held in two installments.).

"We cannot return to the past. We cannot simply be about defeating Donald Trump," Beto O'Rourke tells@Morning_Joe.@WillieGeist: "So, is Joe Biden a return to the past?"

O'Rourke: "He is."pic.twitter.com/NHIrznMwUs

-- MSNBC (@MSNBC)June 13, 2019

On Sunday, it was This Week.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning and welcome to This Week. It may be June, but this week it feels a bit more like January in Iowa. That huge Democratic field flooding the zone, 19 of the 23 candidates in the state this Sunday, and they're going to share a stage later today, the biggest gathering of candidates so far.

And a brand new poll from the Des Moines Register shows where things stand just about two weeks before their first debate. Joe Biden leads the pack with 24 percent. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg basically tied for second, that's a slip for Sanders, a surge for Mayor Pete since the last register poll in March. Kamala Harris next at seven percent. Tied for six at two percent, Amy Klobuchar and our first guest this morning, Beto O'Rourke. He joins us now from Waterloo, Iowa. Beto, thank you for joining us this morning.

O'ROURKE: Good morning.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to start with that Des Moines Register poll. Now we all know the polls like that can change pretty quickly, especially in Iowa, but the trend shows you've been going in the wrong direction.

Eleven percent back in December, five percent in March, now two percent. What's your analysis of what's gone wrong for your campaign, how do you turn it around?

O'ROURKE: You know, I don't know that this many months out from the caucuses in Iowa that these polls really indicate what our prospects are. If I relied on polls in any race that I'd run, I never would have been able to serve in the United States Congress.

We never would have tried to take on Ted Cruz.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the trend matters, doesn't it?

O'ROURKE: And we wouldn't have been able to lead the largest grassroots effort in the history of the state of Texas. Well look, we've got an extraordinary team of volunteers and supporters here today.

I was just in Cedar Rapids yesterday, met a young woman, a student named Maggie who had just knocked on 100 doors. It's those relationships that are made at somebody's doorstep.

It's the volunteers, it's the phone calls, it's the canvassing that allows us to connect with the people who will decide this election. So, you know, these polls this far out I really don't think describe the full picture.

We've got a lot of time, a lot of work, but thankfully we have a number of extraordinary volunteers who are going to make this possible.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you don't think you need to do anything different then, than what you've been doing?

O'ROURKE: Look, I can do a much better job of engaging nationally, but we've held more town halls, answered more questions than any other candidate. And it's what I enjoy doing the most, learning from the people whom I hope to serve.

I think engaging with you on this program and allowing Americans who aren't able to attend one of these town halls to hear my answers to your questions, my vision for this country, what might set me apart from this extraordinary field of candidates who are running to defeat Trump and to bring this country together again.

Certainly I can do more of that, but again I think the fundamentals of this campaign, meeting people, being with them, showing up with the courage of our convictions and addressing how we're going to make sure that healthcare is affordable, that everyone can participate in this economy, that we confront the challenge of climate before it's too late and that we do this in a way that ensures that our democracy fully works.

We announced a set of bold democracy reform proposals just this week to bring tens of millions more of our fellow Americans in and to remove barriers with a new Voting Rights Act that ensures that every vote counts and that every voice is heard.

If we match that with an end to gerrymandering and getting big, unaccountable money and PACs out of our politics, this democracy is going to be up to the challenge. And no one has worked harder to make sure that this democracy works for everyone than I have, whether it's the campaign that we ran in Texas or my service in Congress.

This is what my life's work has been about.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's one of the ideas that sets you apart, that voting rights proposal you put forward this week. But one of the things we saw in the Des Moines Register poll, it's reflected in other conversations with Democrats across the country, is they're really looking for someone who first and foremost is best positioned to beat President Trump.

Why are you that person?

O'ROURKE: Look, when Donald Trump came to my hometown of El Paso, tried to use our community as a backdrop for the case that he wanted to make for a 2,000 mile wall, our community met him and really overpowered his presence with thousands of people who were not against Trump, not against anybody else, but for the best traditions of this country.

I live in and am raising my kids on a beautiful part of the U.S. Mexico border at a time that this country's attention is trained on it. I think I can tell a very powerful, compelling, positive message about the role that immigration and immigrants play, that we don't have to fear those who are coming here from other countries and we can do so in a way where we involve everyone.

And that Senate campaign, I went to each one of the 254 counties of Texas, won more votes than any Democrat has ever won, won Independents for the first time in decades, and brought along half a million Republicans as well.

So this history of including people, making our democracy work, and frankly, George, the fact that we can bring Texas and its 38 electoral votes with us shows that we are best prepared to take on Donald Trump, to defeat him in November of 2020 and then to bring this very divided country back together again in January of 2021.

So, three months into what has been a tough start for his campaign, and two weeks out from what could be the very consequential first debates, O'Rourke's candidacy teeters between the very real potential and skills as a candidate he demonstrated in 2018 in Texas, and that he continues to demonstrate on the campaign trail in 2019, and the lack of any empirical evidence in the polls that he is gaining traction, in fact, quite the opposite, the appearance that, for all he should have going for him, he is losing ground.

From Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer:

Beto O'Rourke is starting to look a lot like a presidential also-ran. The former U.S. representative from El Paso, the darling of Texas liberals and national political media during his ultimately unsuccessful bid to take down Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, has been relegated to the chasing pack for the Democratic nomination.

O'Rourke has become increasingly willing to play the cable news game, making frequent appearances on MSNBC and CNN as spring has gotten closer to summer, but he's struggled to turn those appearances into polling numbers or significant free media time when he's not on the air himself.

According to analytics site FiveThirtyEight, O'Rourke is getting mentioned on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC only about a quarter as much as he was in March, when he officially announced his campaign for president.

Despite announcing comprehensive proposals to reform the U.S. immigration system and protect women's reproductive rights over the last two weeks, O'Rourke has remained steady in the last four major polls of the national Democratic field, coming in right between former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker with 4% support. O'Rourke hasn't cracked 5% in a national poll since receiving 6% support in a CNN survey released April 30.

He's moved left -- O'Rourke wants to vastly reduce immigration enforcement and create an affirmative, federal right to abortion -- as his campaign has continued, but O'Rourke has been unable to break out with Democratic voters. In the process, he may have given up the thing that made him so appealing to Texas voters in the first place.

"A lot of the things that made Beto an attractive candidate against Ted Cruz in 2018, he's discarding by the side of the road as he travels through Iowa and New Hampshire," says Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist. "The idea of being pragmatic and a centrist -- the vote on the 'Thin Blue Line Act,' 'I was wrong, I shouldn't have voted with the police,' his position on pipelines, 'I was wrong, I shouldn't have voted with the energy industry.' He's renouncing all the policies that made him a credible centrist for positions on the left. I think the Beto magic is probably gone."

And yet as Walter Shapiro, covering his eleventh presidential campaign, found in reporting a June 9 piece in the New Republic on O'Rourke in Iowa, it is far harder to see Beto in person and count him out, or even reconcile what he's doing on the ground with what's not happening for him in the polls.

Near dusk on a muggy Saturday night in Cedar Rapids, more than 80 Iowans stood patiently in a slow-moving line in the parking lot of a strip mall near downtown. The attraction: the chance to question or take selfies with Beto O'Rourke, dressed in an open-neck blue shirt and gray pants.

Those in line at the opening of O'Rourke's local headquarters ranged from retired nurse Connie McCall ("Beto really relates. He looks right at you") to trucking executive Lance Voutrobek ("I like his appeal to the centrist, more moderate group, instead of the far left").

At the same time almost to the minute, The Des Moines Register was releasing its Iowa Poll of likely caucus-goers that showed O'Rourke--once a darling of the political handicappers--with dismal 2-percent support. Sunday morning that minuscule poll number led George Stephanopoulos's ABC interview with O'Rourke.

In covering presidential politics, there are moments when you have to choose between the polls and what you see with your own eyes. After following O'Rourke for most of two days, I am going with my instincts: The solid, attentive crowds of more than a hundred that he attracted for Friday town meetings in smaller southern Iowa towns like Ottumwa and Knoxville don't seem like a short-lived mirage to me. Nearly eight months before the opening-gun caucuses, his presidential campaign just doesn't feel like a futile gesture by an also-ran who instead should be running for the Senate from Texas.

O'Rourke is willing to admit that he has stumbled out of the starting gate, telling me, "I think I could have gotten off on a better foot, for sure."

At a Saturday morning house party in Des Moines for Pete Buttigieg--the Democratic heartthrob of the moment--Patsy Mattas, a retired college administrator, explained why she has ruled out O'Rouke. "I was put off by his coverage," she said, "especially the words on the Vanity Fair cover."

When a three-month-old magazine cover is mentioned out of the blue as a near-disqualification for a candidate, it says something about the self-destructive power of the words. The quotation in question made O'Rourke appear almost messianic in his inflated sense of himself: "I want to be in it. Man, I'm just born to be in it."

The Vanity Fair cover was part of a larger perception that O'Rourke's presidential campaign was built around little more than skateboarding and live-streaming his visit to his dentist hygienist. I will confess that before I saw him in Iowa, I also had the impression that he could never surmount the gravitas gap facing a candidate more famous for his time in a failed punk-rock band than his policy proposals.

But the danger of clichés in politics is that they prevent you from ever looking beyond them. Certainly, there was nothing flashy about O'Rourke's visit Friday morning to Matt Russell's small 110-acre farm in Lacona. Farm visits are, of course, an Iowa political necessity, but O'Rourke, walking through a thigh-high hay field, displayed a seemingly genuine curiosity (even though I can't prove it with a pithy quote) that went beyond the ritual blather of a listening tour.

Shapiro's conclusion:

Beto O'Rourke will never be an Elizabeth Warren, running on the heft of detailed policy proposals. But if he finds the right message and tone, he boasts the natural political talents that could allow him to his overcome his now-anemic polling numbers--in Iowa and beyond.

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