Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, doesn’t appear to have Sen. Bernie Sanders’, I-Vt., endorsement for a 2020 Democratic presidential bid just yet.
When asked on Fox News Wednesday whether a candidate who lost his 2018 Texas Senate campaign should run for the White House, Sanders said it was too early to tell.
“I think it is a little bit premature. We’ve got a little bit of time left before that,” he said.
Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats, was pressed on O’Rourke after the El Paso congressman beat him and led the field in a 2020 straw poll released Tuesday by liberal political action committee MoveOn. Sanders won the group’s endorsement in 2016 when he challenged establishment favorite Hillary Clinton for the party’s nomination.
But Sanders, who is openly weighing another tilt at the White House, on Wednesday was adamant that his dip in popularity with MoveOn members was not attributable to a shift in liberal politics. Instead, he said all Americans want better healthcare, wages, and infrastructure.
“That’s not Democrats, that’s not Republicans, that is what the American people want,” Sanders said. “And I’m going to do my best to push an agenda that addresses those and many other issues.”
O’Rourke and former Vice President Joe Biden earned 15.6 percent and 14.95 percent support respectively among MoveOn members surveyed online for the organization’s straw poll. A plurality, however, wouldn’t vote for any of the contenders suggested by MoveOn or didn’t know for whom they would cast a ballot.
The top 10 possibilities included Sanders followed by Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., as well as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
[Related: Democrats want Beto O’Rourke to run again, and soon]
