Obama praises Beto O’Rourke: ‘Impressive young man’

Former President Obama on Tuesday praised Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) as an “impressive young man.”

Speaking at a recording session of his former strategist David Axelrod’s “The Axe Files” podcast, Obama said the El Paso congressman “ran a terrific race” in his Senate bid against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“It felt as if he based his statements and his positions on what he believed,” Obama said. “And that, you’d like to think, is normally how things work. Sadly it’s not.”

{mosads}O’Rourke’s effort to unseat Cruz catapulted him into the national spotlight, sparking widespread calls for him to take on President Trump in 2020. 

The three-term congressman achieved stunning fundraising hauls and lost to Cruz by just 3 points — a shockingly close race in the state that has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in decades.

A top Democratic fundraising bundler described O’Rourke as “Obama, but white” in an interview with Politico on Monday, a comparison that the former president did not deny.

“The reason I was able to make a connection with a sizeable portion of the country was because people had a sense that I said what I meant,” Obama said, telling Axelrod that O’Rourke is one of several candidates who he thinks fits that description.

“We’ve got a number of people who are thinking about the race who I think fall in that same category,” Obama said.

O’Rourke has not announced any intentions to jump into the 2020 White House race. If he were to enter, he would be a part of what is likely to be a very crowded Democratic Primary field, with maybe more than a dozen candidates ready to throw their name in the mix.