The Democrats: Why Bernie fans fear Beto

“The first skirmish of the 2020 Democratic primary” is underway, said Jonathan Chait in New York magazine. In recent weeks, supporters of Bernie Sanders have leveled a wave of attacks at Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, who became a Democratic darling in November by almost beating Sen. Ted Cruz in a deeply Republican state. O’Rourke’s rise “poses an obvious threat” to the party’s leftist wing. He’s a mainstream Democrat who “often expresses broad sympathy for left-wing policy goals while suggesting he favors a more pragmatic alternative.” That is pure heresy to Sanders socialists, who demand fealty to an uncompromising left-wing agenda, including “Medicare for all” and free college tuition. Even more alarming to Bernie’s fans is O’Rourke’s “Obama-like personal appeal.” Like Obama, he’s handsome, charismatic, and has proven that he can raise huge sums of money. For the next 18 months, the fight between mainstream liberals and socialists will consume the Democrats—and determine whom the party nominates for president.

Democrats should be deeply suspicious of “Betomania,” said Zaid Jilani in Current Affairs. O’Rourke refused to sign on to bills supporting single-payer health care and free college in Con- gress, where he rarely challenged the party establishment. Maybe that’s because this so-called progressive is a white, male Ivy League graduate who married the daughter of a billionaire. In 2020, practically any Democrat has a good shot at beating a historically unpopular Donald Trump, said Elizabeth Bruenig in The Washington Post. So why run another wishy-washy centrist? Democrats have a historic opportunity to elect a candidate “with a bold, clear, distinctly progressive agenda.”

Sorry, but Sanders supporters “do not get to have a monopoly on what it means to be a progressive,” said Peter Hamby in Vanity Fair. In the Senate race, O’Rourke campaigned on an unapologetically liberal platform that included expanding Medicaid, banning assault-style rifles, and passing the DREAM Act. He also was one of the few Democrats to challenge Obama’s inhumane deportation policy. Sanders is a darling to the Left because he was the only alternative to Clinton in 2016. But in 2020, there will be a bumper crop of progressive candidates to choose from, with O’Rourke and others championing ideas that Sanders helped push into the Democratic mainstream. “If you inhabit the American Left today, you suddenly have choices’’—including O’Rourke.