BETO: Joe Biden Becoming President Would Be a ‘Return to the Past’

2020 Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday, where he declared that a Joe Biden victory in the presidential election would be a “return to the past.”

“You cannot go back to the end of the Obama administration and think that that’s good enough,” O’Rourke said as reported by HuffPost. “We had real problems before Donald Trump became president.”

Beto Highlights Issues from Obama Administration

Beto then touched on gun violence, economic inequality, and immigration as problems that endured under Obama.

“We cannot return to the past. We cannot simply be about defeating Donald Trump,” he said. “And that cannot be who we are going forward. We’ve got to be bigger, we’ve got to be bolder, we have to set a much higher mark and be relentless in pursuing that.”

O’Rourke’s feelings about Biden aside, the former vice president still leads the 2020 Democratic pack. The Des Moines Register conducted a poll this week that put Biden at 24 percent, while O’Rourke only clocked in at 2 percent.

These early polls, however, don’t faze O’Rourke.

“I don’t know that this many months out from the caucuses in Iowa these polls really indicate what our prospects are,” O’Rourke said. “If I relied on polls, in any race I’ve run, I never would have served in the U.S. Congress, never would have taken on Ted Cruz. Never would have been able to lead the largest grassroots effort in the state of Texas.”

Beto Distances Himself From other 2020 Democrat Candidates

O’Rourke is playing smart politics in trying to distinguish himself from the current Democrat frontrunner. But his quip about Biden being a creature of the “past” cuts two ways.

One, yes Democrats weren’t exactly happy with the lack of “progress” from their perspective during the Obama years. And a Biden victory would likely give more of the same policy-wise.

However, part of the reason Biden is likely the current frontrunner is that enough voters understand that the far left of the Democratic Party – of which O’Rourke is a part of – might not be something most Americans want. Voters might prefer the devil they know in Biden, to the socialists they don’t know.

Expect Beto and other Democrats trailing Biden in the polls to keep taking shots at the former vice president.

And expect the 2020 Democratic primary to get a whole lot crazier than it already is.