I am on pins and needles waiting for Beto O’Rourke to tell us whether he is running for president of the United States in 2020.
Well, actually, I’m not. I am amazed, though, at the excitement that a potential Beto candidacy is ginning up among Democratic partisans as the field for the presidential election keeps growing.
O’Rourke seems like a fine young family man. He represented El Paso, Texas, in Congress for three terms. Then he ran for the Senate in 2018 and came within a couple of percentage points of defeating Sen. Ted Cruz, the sometimes-fiery Republican incumbent.
That a Democrat could come as close as O’Rourke did in 2018 to upsetting a GOP incumbent still has politicos’ attention. Thus, they are waiting Beto’s decision.
He says he’ll let us know by the end of the month whether he intends to seek the presidency, which is just a few days down the road.
I remain decidedly mixed about Beto’s possible candidacy. I wanted him to win his race against Cruz. I think he would be a fine U.S. senator.
And, maybe, one day he will make an equally fine president of the United States. Still, there’s just something a bit too green about Beto.
Do his policies bother me? No. I consider myself a center-left kind of fellow. Thus, I don’t see Beto as a flame-throwing progressive bad-ass. He’s not a socialist — closeted or otherwise.
However, he seems to be trading on the excitement he built with his Senate run, believing possibly that he can parlay that into a national campaign.
I just don’t know
That all said, I’ll repeat what I’ve stated already: If he were to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination and then face off in the fall of 2020 against Donald John Trump, he would have my support all the way to the finish line.
He just isn’t the perfect candidate to take on Donald Trump.
I’m still waiting for Mr. or Ms. Political Perfection — or a reasonable facsimile — to jump out of the tall grass.