O’Rourke could be primary wild card

WASHINGTON — The 2020 Democratic presidential primary, already expected to be the party’s most wide open in decades, has been jostled on the eve of many long-plotted campaign announcements by a political threat that few contenders bothered considering until recently:

Will a soon-to-be-former congressman, with an unremarkable legislative record and a Senate loss, upend their plans?

Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas has emerged as the wild card of the presidential campaign-inwaiting for a Democratic Party that lacks a clear 2020 front-runner. After a star-making turn in his close race against Sen. Ted Cruz, O’Rourke is increasingly serious about a 2020 run — a development that is rousing activists in early-voting states, leading veterans of former president Barack Obama’s political operation (and Obama himself ) to offer their counsel and hampering would-be rivals who are scrambling to lock down influential supporters and strategists as future campaign staff.

Advisers to other prospective Democratic candidates for 2020 acknowledge that O’Rourke is worthy of their concern. His record-setting success with small donors would test the grassroots strength of progressives like Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. His sometimes saccharine call to summon the nation’s better angels would compete with the likely pitch of Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.

And his appeal to some former Obama advisers — and, potentially, his electoral coalition of young people, women and often infrequent voters — could complicate a possible run for former vice-president Joe Biden, who would aim to win back many of his former boss’ constituencies.

O’Rourke would surely have vulnerabilities in a primary, including an absence of signature policy feats or a centrepiece issue to date. In his Senate race, he was often disinclined to go negative, frustrating some Democrats who believe he wasted a chance to defeat Cruz, and he struggled at times in some traditional formats like televised debates. He is, by admission and design, not the political brawler some Democrats might crave against a president they loathe. And his candidacy would not be history-making like Obama’s nor many of his likely peers’ in the field, in an election when many activists may want a female or non-white nominee.

But the fact that O’Rourke is even considering a run speaks to uncertainty in the party, as simmering opposition to President Trump is colliding with crosscurrents of gender, race, ideology and age within its ranks.

With some three dozen Democrats considering presidential campaigns, the field could end up so crowded that the vote gets diluted — a phenomenon that helped Trump edge ahead of the Republican pack in 2016.