“Doesn’t he remind you of Kennedy?” Martinez said as O’Rourke offered firm handshakes and music recommendations to a coffeehouse crowd. “He’s young. That’s what it’s going to take to try and beat Trump.”
Some closer to O’Rourke’s age were less convinced. Standing near the back, Erin Cruz, 41, sized up O’Rourke — and then praised septuagenarian socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“I’m looking for someone to be as progressive as Bernie,” Cruz said.
Actually, she amended, perhaps just Bernie himself.
O’Rourke entered the Democratic primary race this past week with an aspirational pitch and a semi-improvisational tour of Iowa, broadcasting his message of generational uplift and immediately thrusting age into the main currents of the 2020 race.
The contenders leading in initial polls, Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, will be 79 and 78 by Inauguration Day 2021. President Donald Trump will be 74.
Yet as party activists begin to appraise the field, they are grappling with whether to once again embrace a younger candidate who reflects the future or shrug off age and elevate a veteran politician who most clearly represents their simultaneous craving for undiluted liberalism and someone who can thwart Trump.
If history is a guide, O’Rourke and other Democrats betting on a youthful appeal — like Cory Booker, 49; JuliánCastro, 44; or Pete Buttigieg and Tulsi Gabbard, both 37 — should have an advantage. Of the last five Democratic presidents, only Lyndon B. Johnson, who ascended to the job because of the assassination of a 46-year-old president, was older than 52 when he was first elected president.
But for many in the party, dedication to this critical component of past success — putting forward a new face — is being tested in the 2020 race by twin impulses: the devotion to Sanders among voters many decades younger than him, and an overriding desire among Democrats to defeat the president. Supporters of Sanders believe he offers transformational change — the promise of not merely ousting Trump but also remaking the country into a more just place.
At the same time, moderates in the party are tempted by Biden, wagering that political comfort food may prove the safest recipe. This combination of a primary electorate that is at once hungry for reform and nervous about nominating someone too callow to defeat Trump poses perhaps the most serious challenge to a candidate like O’Rourke.