The media has chosen their candidate.
Via Dallas News:
TMZ trails him around the capital. Fans still check his Facebook page to see if he’s going live again anytime soon. Democratic activists keep trying to lure him to Iowa and New Hampshire, and campaign operatives are sending him resumes, uninvited.
U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke is getting more buzz as a potential White House contender than people who’ve served as governor, senator or even vice president and secretary of state, even though he’s still stinging from falling short last month to Sen. Ted Cruz.
“The fact that we came close doesn’t diminish the bitterness of the loss,” he said, acknowledging the very real doubts about whether someone who couldn’t win election in his home state deserves promotion to commander in chief.
“Oh yeah. I think that’s a great question,” he said. “I ask that question myself.”
Standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, discussing a future he insists he hasn’t sorted out yet, House colleagues walk past calling out “Beto! Beto!” or “Go 2020!” — razzing the El Paso Democrat who raised a stunning $80 million in his near-miss in Texas.
He’s avoided interviews since Election Day, and insists that he hasn’t even begun the process of deciding whether to heed the siren song, though that hasn’t stopped him from consulting with the likes of Barack Obama and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
“I just don’t feel comfortable talking to anybody in Iowa or New Hampshire, because I don’t want to stoke,” he said. “I just truly have not made a decision or even really begun the serious work of making a decision, so I just don’t want to lead anyone to think that we’re doing something or not doing something.”
But doing nothing doesn’t quash the speculation.
Invitations keep coming in and polls show continuing uptick for the non-candidate.
A CNN/Des Moines Register poll released Saturday night showed O’Rourke one of just three Democrats with double-digit support among likely caucusgoers in Iowa, at 11 percent — lagging only former Vice President Joe Biden, at 32 percent, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at 19 percent.
The Texan topped a straw poll of progressive activists released Dec. 11 by MoveOn.org, edging out Biden, Sanders and Kamala Harris, with the rest of the pack trailing in single digits.
Name ID is a big part of that at such an early stage. Still, that’s a critical ingredient and now that O’Rourke has it, he can afford to bide some time.
A national poll of Democrats released by CNN on Friday put O’Rourke in the top tier for the first time, though well behind Biden and Sanders.
“I want to talk to [his wife] Amy and see what she wants me to do in terms of time with kids and family in the house in El Paso … and then just interesting things that you can do,” he said. “Amy and I had this expectation that after the sixth of November, one way or another things would kind of die down and we could regroup and you know, catch up.
“But in some ways, things have intensified,” he said.
Over and over, he said he wants time to “regroup” after nearly two years on the road.
“I’d love to take a backpack up into the Gila Wilderness” — a vast expanse in New Mexico, a hundred miles from El Paso — “and just spend some time thinking through stuff,” he said.
But he also seems to pine for another kind of trail, the sort that leads to higher office.
“As brutal as it was, and it was, and as tough as it was on our family, and it was incredibly tough,” he said, “there’s also just some really amazing, transcendent, fun moments that are unlike anything that we’ve done in our lives or are likely to get to do again in our lives, short of running for something else.”