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As she announces her decision to launch a formal exploratory committee for a 2020 POTUS bid, “Senator Warren is a candidate on the cusp,” according to a prominent Massachusetts-based pollster.

“In many ways she’s a candidate in-between,” David Paleologos tells InsideSources. Paleologos is director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston.  “Warren’s definitely a viable candidate, no doubt about that. But she’s neither a top-tier candidate nor a long shot. She’s not a new face, but she’s not an old hand like [former VP Joe] Biden or [Sen. Bernie] Sanders, either.  She’s on the cusp in many ways.”

While the 69-year-old Massachusetts senator’s announcement has been long expected, the timing–on New Years Eve, and early in the cycle while other big names remain on the sidelines–is somewhat surprising. Traditionally, top-tier candidates tend to sit and wait, attempting to build up some drama before the big announcement. Warren’s decision to jump in early may be her campaign acknowledging their back-of-the-pack position.

“Her decision to enter early is clearly an acknowledgment that she has considerable work to do with early state voters (and major donors) to repair the self-inflicted damage of her attempt to put the Native American question behind her,” says CNN’s Chris Cillizza. 

Joel Payne, a DC-based Democratic strategist who advised the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, agrees that Warren’s early negatives could be a problem.   “While people point to the Native American heritage uproar,  I think the biggest danger to her candidacy is her high name ID because many voters may already have hardened opinions about her,” he told InsideSources.

And in a series of polls over the past month, those opinions among Democrats aren’t great for Senator Warren. As InsideSources has previously reported, Warren has consistently been out of the top tier of polling among Democrats, behind candidates like Biden, Bernie Sanders and Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke.  In the most recent CNN poll, Warren was the only major Democratic candidate whose approval was underwater (negatives higher than her positives) at 30 percent approve, 32 percent disapprove.  Sen. Sanders, on the other hand, was at 51/35 percent and Joe Biden was at 54/29 percent approval/disapprove.

According to Paleologos, the top tier of candidates is “I don’t know yet” and Joe Biden, with a second-tier that includes Biden, Beto, California Sen. Kamala Harris and New Jersey’s Sen. Cory Booker. “Warren’s in the third tier–another reason she couldn’t afford to wait,” Paleologos said.

This early in the race, Warren’s sagging support among progressives is her biggest challenge. Progressive activists who traditionally energize and deliver voters in primaries have plenty of choices in 2020 (as opposed to 2016 or 2008), and they’ve yet to rally around Liz Warren. Two straw polls of progressive organizations, MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, both find Warren trailing the “Three A-Bee-gos,” Biden, Bernie and Beto.  In the DFA straw poll, she’s in fourth place at 8 percent and in the MoveOn poll (the same group that spend about $1 million on the #DraftWarren movement four years ago) she’s in fifth place at 7 percent.

According to the latest Suffolk poll, American’s top wish for Washington, DC is for politicians to work together (29 percent) far higher than more divisive issues like impeaching President Trump (9 percent). That may not bode well for a candidate best known for battling with the president.

Paleologos also notes a Suffolk poll of her own constituents in deep-blue Massachusetts earlier this year that found 58 percent of Bay Staters didn’t want her to run for POTUS in 2020.  The fact that she’s essentially announced her candidacy even before she’s been sworn in to the new US Senate term local voters just gave her shows how concerned her campaign is about their current position in the polls.

“By announcing now, she’s saying ‘I’m serious. I’m in it to win it.’ It shows that she sees a path to victory,” Paleologos said. And that path goes right through New Hampshire.

Jim Demers, a key New Hampshire Democrat, told InsideSources: “As a neighbor, New Hampshire is a must-win state for Senator Warren. Getting in early helps insure she will be in every news story in the coming weeks.” Demers, who’s backing Cory Booker, believes that “the New Hampshire primary is wide open.”

Payne believes Sen. Warren’s hopes could possibly ride on New Hampshire as “her firewall…given its proximity to Massachusetts,” while Paleologos predicts Warren will “play the home girl–twice.”

“First she’ll go to Iowa as the ‘Sooner Sister,’ the fellow Midwesterner running in the caucuses. Then she’ll morph into the ‘New Hampshire Neighbor’ from Massachusetts. After that, she’ll have to hope that some of her fellow progressives have dropped out by the time she gets to South Carolina.”

Warren’s campaign video, also released on New Year’s Eve, certainly highlighted her Oklahoma roots more than she has in the past.  Warren also goes out of her way in the video to attack Ronald Reagan–an interesting decision given that the Gipper’s approval rating among Americans in 2018 was 72 percent.

Fairly or unfairly, Warren continues to struggle with the #Fauxcahontas scandal, a story that many on the Left say has hurt her far more than originally realized. “There just aren’t a lot of Democrats talking about Liz Warren at the top of their list,” one New Hampshire Democratic activist told InsideSources after her announcement. “She’s just not generating much excitement.”

Still, progressives have hardly turned their back on Warren. “Senator Elizabeth Warren’s formal entrance into the 2020 race for President today helps launch what we believe will be a vibrant discussion of bold, inclusive populist ideas in the Democratic Primary, and we look forward to the wide array of progressive candidates that we expect to join her in it in the year ahead,” Charles Chamberlain, Executive Director of Democracy for America told InsideSources in a statement.

In post-midterms America, the Democratic Party is all about the “B’s”– Bernie, Biden and Beto.

A new straw poll by the progressive political action committee Democracy for America gives Sen. Bernie Sanders a big lead among its supporters, with former Vice President Joe Biden and Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke in the second and third spots. And, once again, Sen. Elizabeth Warren lags well behind.

Vermont progressive Bernie Sanders topped with list with 36 percent, followed by Biden at 15 percent and O’Rourke–the Left’s flavor-of-the-month–at 12 percent. Sen. Warren was in fourth place with just 8 percent of DFA’s support, narrowly edging out California Sen. Kamala Harris at 7 percent.

“Let’s be clear: Progressive support in the 2020 Democratic primary is up for grabs and so is Democracy for America’s endorsement,” said DFA’s incoming chairman Charles Chamberlain, in a statement released to Politico.  “Unlike 2016, no candidate has support strong enough for the Democratic Party establishment to clear the field, which means progressives will have an excellent opportunity over the next year to kick the tires on a wide range of different candidates and find the best one to take on Trump.”

DFA, an organization founded by progressive Howard Dean, endorsed Sanders in the heated 2016 Democratic POTUS primary, so it’s no surprise that he’s the top choice of their membership.  However, the fact that a series of polls–both among progressives and Democrats as a whole–put the same three candidates in the top tier gives a good indication of how likely primary voters view the current field of contenders.

And perhaps most significant, one-time front-runner Elizabeth Warren doesn’t crack the top three in any of these surveys.

For example, last week the progressive activist group MoveOn.org released the results of their own straw poll. Beto was on top, with Biden and Bernie close behind. Warren trailed Harris and came in fifth. Similarly, a national poll of Democrats released by CNN over the weekend put Biden at top, followed by Bernie and Beto, with Sen. Warren in seventh place and just 3 percent support.

Pollsters and political pros all agree that polling and surveys two year ahead of the general election are far too early to be significant. The consensus, rather, is that there is no consensus.

“There is no frontrunner there,” pollster Frank Luntz said on Fox News. “There are twice as many candidates they may run for the Democrats this time as ran for the Republicans two years ago.”

Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner argues that the strong performance by Beto O’Rourke is less a reflection of the Texas Democrat’s strength than the weakness of the field overall. “The fact that O’Rourke, without doing much, could leapfrog all of the other candidates who had been clearly positioning themselves to run for years, suggests that none of the Democratic candidates enter the race in a particularly strong position,” Klein writes.

And despite his consistently strong showing in these surveys, Joe Biden insists he won’t make his decision to run based on the polls.

“I don’t think about the polling data,” Biden told CBS News. “I think about whether or not I should run based on very private decisions relating to my family and the loss of my son and what I want to do with the rest of my life. But I don’t think of it in terms of can I win, can I – will I lose. That’s not part of the calculation.”

First Politico, then SRSS and now a new CNN/Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers confirms that, in the early going, the top names in the Democratic field are Biden, Bernie and–surprise!–Beto.

In Iowa, Biden’s at the top of the pack with 32 percent support, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders at 19 percent and Rep. Beto O’Rourke at 11 percent. They were the only people in double-digits.

On the same day the poll was released, dozens of grassroots supporters gathered in Manchester, NH for a “Day of Action” organized by the Draft Beto 2020 movement.

The Iowa numbers are similar to a recent Politico poll of Democrats nationwide: Biden 26 percent, Sanders 19 percent and O’Rourke at 8 percent. The three Democrats shared the same ranking in another CNN poll, conducted by SRSS, of Democrats across the country: Biden 30 percent, Sanders 14 percent and O’Rourke 9 percent.

In all of the latest polling, Liz Warren lags behind the top tier of candidates.

While Beto’s numbers, hovering around 10 percent, aren’t particularly impressive, the fact that he consistently ranks ahead of more established candidates–Sen. Elizabeth Warren in particular–is a sign of how he’s sparked interest among Democrats. A year ago, the Texas congressman was virtually unknown outside his district while Sen. Warren was viewed as a front-runner. Today, Warren’s suffered high-profile setbacks while O’Rourke has inspired a movement to pull him into the primary.

A group of Beto O’Rourke supporters gathered in Manchester NH for a Day of Action

Other numbers that should concern Sen. Warren are the favorable/unfavorable ratings from Iowa caucus goers. While Joe Biden’s favorables are extremely high at 82 percent and his unfavorables are a low 15 percent, Warren’s numbers are a more modest 64 percent approval, 20 percent disapproval. That 20 percent is the highest negative numbers among Iowa Democrats (Though nowhere close to Hillary Clinton’s gasp-inducing 47 approve/49 disapprove.)

For his part, O’Rourke acknowledged to the Dallas Morning News that the question of his preparedness for the job of president is a legitimate one.  “I ask it myself,” he said.

“I just don’t feel comfortable talking to anybody in Iowa or New Hampshire, because I don’t want to stoke. I just truly have not made a decision or even really begun the serious work of making a decision, so I just don’t want to lead anyone to think that we’re doing something or not doing something.”

But that’s not stopping Democrats across the country from expressing true interest in his candidacy. So much so that, according to the AP, the Biden camp is considering an “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” strategy, floating a Biden/Beto ticket for 202o.

The Associated Press reports that past and current advisers to Biden, 76, have expressed some “concerns about age” and have raised the possibility of O’Rourke, 47, as a possible running mate. If 76 sounds old, keep in mind that Biden’s fellow front-runner, Bernie Sanders, is 77. He would be 79 if sworn in as president in January 2021.

This may be part of the reason why so many Democrats are taking a second look at a fresh new face like Beto’s.

Earlier this week the progressive group MoveOn.org released results of a straw poll of its members on the 2020 potential Democratic lineup.  The outcome inspired a bit of media buzz when progressive rock star (complete with fog machine) Rep. Beto O’Rourke outpaced the entire field.

It turns out MoveOn.org isn’t the only progressive group polling its members. You can go to Democracy for America’s webpage right now and pick your top three 2020 candidates. DFA is a progressive group originally founded by Howard Dean and is best known today for its support of Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Their list, by the way, includes three people who just lost their own elections in 2018: Rep. O’Rourke, Georgia’s Stacey Abrams and Florida’s Andrew Gillum.

See the entire list of 2018 potential candidates by clicking here

Meanwhile the far-Left group People’s Action has announced they’ll be polling their members in 2019, and they are already organizing candidate forums–including one in Durham, NH on October 14 hosted by their local arm, Rights & Democracy NH– to push POTUS candidates towards progressive issues.

Thrilled to announce we will be co-hosting a Presidential Candidate Forum in Durham NH on October 14, 2019 with @PplsAction & @NHYouthMovement! #nhpolitics #2020election https://t.co/Q7qwuVVC09

— Rights & Democracy (@RightsNH) December 12, 2018

And liberal billionaire Tom Steyer’s organization NextGen America is also powering up, both the support his now-likely candidacy and to pressure candidates to embrace far-Left positions like carbon taxes and socialized medicine, as well as their insistence that Democrats must impeach President Trump.

All of these efforts motivate the base to get involved. Doing well in these early progressive polls is a good way to give your candidacy a push among primary voters. And in the Ocasio-Cortez era, attending these events is all but mandatory.

At the same time, the motivated base in turns “motivates” candidates to embrace the party’s more out-of-the-mainstream policies.  And thus far, running for president on the far Left has proven a losing strategy. President Barack Obama governed as a liberal progressive, but during the campaign he went to great lengths to avoid the label–claiming to oppose both a single-payer healthcare system and legalizing same-sex marriage, for example. The last politician to run as a full-throated liberal on a major-party ticket was Walter Mondale (maybe) and George McGovern (definitely).  They each carried one state.

One.

Progressive candidates didn’t do particularly well in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary last September. The more moderate candidates in the high-profile races won handily. It could be that New Hampshire’s Democratic voters just aren’t on the same page as their more progressive counterparts in, say, Massachusetts, California or New York.  Moderate Democrats like Joe Biden, former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) might do well here.

But with progressive “voting” starting today, and after a year’s worth of MoveOn/DFA/OFA/People’s Action organizing, by the time the FITN primary rolls around, there may not be any moderates left.

In a straw poll of MoveOn.org activists, one-time darling of the movement Sen. Elizabeth Warren finished a distant fifth with less than 7 percent of the vote, giving her less than half the support of either Rep. Beto O’Rourke (16 percent) or former Vice President Joe Biden (15 percent). Finishing out the top five were Sen. Bernie Sanders (13 percent) and Sen. Kamala Harris (10 %).

The top vote-getter among MoveOn.Org members was “Someone Else/Don’t Know with 18 percent support. Straw polls are not scientific, but this one reflects what NHJournal is hearing from grassroots Democrats, who say they are in no hurry to pick a candidate and are looking forward to the campaign season.

“I can’t really name more than one or two people who are backing a candidate,” one Granite State Democratic insider told NHJournal. “Everybody else wants to be courted a little I think.”

A popular meme among MoveOn.org supporters in 2015.

That may be, but it’s hard not to compare Sen. Warren’s soaring stature among MoveOn.org progressives four years ago–they literally spent $1 million attempting to get her to #RunWarrenRun–as opposed to the lack of enthusiasm today.  It’s true that when MoveOn.org presented Warren with 365,000 signed petitions, there weren’t nearly as many potential progressive candidates as there are today.  At the same time, if she’s made a positive impact on these activists over the past four years, she wouldn’t be struggling to get them on board.

Instead, her actions thus far have driven people away. Her DNA stunt, for example. Here’s Tina Nguyen in the liberal magazine Vanity Fair:

The stunt was meant to put Warren on the offensive—a pre-emptive strike to head off a presumed weakness in her autobiography—but instead betrayed a sense of defensiveness that Trump and his allies quickly seized on. It rubbed Native Americans the wrong way, made some liberals queasy, and worst of all, reeked of the sort of consultant-driven, Clintonian groupthink that drove 2016 voters crazy. It was the sort of misstep that politicians make when they are trying too hard—and, perhaps, when they’re worried about the competition breathing down their necks.

Whether it’s “trying to hard” or, as the Boston Globe suggested, “missing her moment,” Sen. Warren’s currently headed in the wrong direction. Here are the entire results of the MoveOn.Org straw poll:

Someone Else / Don’t Know 17.89%
Beto O’Rourke 15.60%
Joe Biden 14.95%
Bernie Sanders 13.15%
Kamala Harris 10.02%
Elizabeth Warren 6.42%
Sherrod Brown 2.92%
Amy Klobuchar 2.75%
Michael Bloomberg 2.71%
Cory Booker 2.63%
Joseph Kennedy III 1.90%
Stacey Abrams 1.16%
Kirsten Gillibrand 1.09%
Tulsi Gabbard 0.78%
John Hickenlooper 0.71%
Eric Holder 0.59%
Eric Swalwell 0.54%
Julián Castro 0.48%
Jeff Merkley 0.42%
Jay Inslee 0.38%
Andrew Gillum 0.36%
Mitch Landrieu 0.35%
Chris Murphy 0.33%
Tom Steyer 0.28%
Marianne Williamson 0.26%
Deval Patrick 0.24%
Eric Garcetti 0.20%
Richard Ojeda 0.18%
Steve Bullock 0.17%
Pete Buttigieg 0.12%
John Delaney 0.11%
Bill de Blasio 0.10%
Howard Schultz 0.10%
Terry McAuliffe 0.10%

They are the headlines every potential presidential candidate wants to see a month after the midterms:

• “Liz Warren Is Catching Fire” – Politico
• “Elizabeth Warren Has Arrived And So Have We” – Daily Kos
• “Elizabeth Warren’s Moment” – NBC News

“The storyline…is that the heart of the Democratic Party really wants Warren,” wrote Chris Cillizza of CNN.com, while Rep. Keith Ellison of the DNC  said on Face the Nation: “I think that right now people want an authentic candidate. Elizabeth Warren comes off as a very authentic person. So that is what people are gravitating towards.”

That’s quite a December for any candidate. Unfortunately for Liz Warren, that was December….2014.

Four years ago this week, MoveOn.Org was touting the Massachusetts liberal as the progressive’s rising star on their  “Run Warren Run news” website. (“We’re excited for week 2 of the Run Warren Run campaign…”) A few weeks later they would pour $250,000 into their “Draft Warren” efforts, backed by veteran Democratic campaigners like New Hampshire’s Kurt Ehrenberg and Blair Lawton of Iowa.

The effort lasted into the summer of 2015, with excited Democratic activists gathering more than 365,000 signatures trying to rally a reluctant candidate to run for president.

Iowa MoveOn member Saba Hafeez (University of Iowa campus organizer) and New Hampshire Democracy for America member August Tucker (an 18-year-old HS senior from Portsmouth, NH) delivered the petition to Sen. Warren in June, 2015

Four years later, the roles are reversed.

It’s hard to imagine a “Run Warren Run” grassroots wildfire today. Despite her highest of high profiles, polls among Democrats show her in the single digits in the 2020 race. Most Democrats in her home state of Massachusetts aren’t keen on her running.  And her decision to release a DNA test in her ongoing #Fauxcahontas fight with President Trump—just weeks before the midterms—was viewed bad timing and worse strategy.

And so now Liz Warren is trying to transform herself into the very obstacle she faced four years ago: The next Hillary Clinton.

In a story headlined “Elizabeth Warren Forges a 2020 Machine,” Politico reports that if Warren pulls the trigger on her POTUS campaign, “she’ll be rolling out arguably the most advanced and sweeping infrastructure in the Democratic field, a plug-and-play campaign that could give her a massive head start on nearly every contender in the burgeoning primary roster.”  That includes $12.5 million in the bank and more than 50 people on her campaign payroll.

She’s “built a shadow war room….that has encompassed work in all 50 states and close coordination with more than 150 campaigns,” Matt Viser reports in the Washington Post. It’s an impressive tale. But is it true?

Some Democrats tell InsideSources off the record that they think this is largely spin from the Massachusetts senator, an attempt to build up her standing as a member of the 2020 short list.  “They’re pushing this 150 campaign number so it looks like she has a machine,” one New Hampshire Democrat told NHJournal. “But she’s no Hillary Clinton—at least, not yet.”

But could she be?  Hillary Clinton had the benefit of the Clinton brand, built on eight years in the White House and a narrow loss to the politically-talented Barack Obama in 2008.  Sen. Warren, on the other hand, is a Democrat in one of the most Democratic states in the country. The last Republican to win a general election campaign for the U.S. Senate was Ed Brooke in 1972.  (Scott Brown won a special election in 2010 and promptly lost to Warren two years later.)

In fact, according to data analyst Harry Enten of CNN, Warren is an underperforming Massachusetts Democrat. Adjusting for the high number of Democratic voters in her state, “Warren’s performance was the sixth worst of all Senate Democrats” in 2018, Enten says.

When it comes to 2018, all the standard caveats go here: It’s early, none of the best-known Democrats considering a run have even announced, the Iowa caucuses are more than 400 days away, etc.  But the stark contrast between the mood of progressives today and four years ago is hard to miss.  Instead of headlines like “A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth Warren,” the headline in the Wall Street Journal reads “Too Soon For Democrats to Dump Liz Warren?”

Yes, the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal lean right. But the headline from the left leaning Washington Post reads  “As Her DNA Test Still Reverberates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Political Operation Shows Fissures.” Even her longtime allies at the Boston Globe have editorialized “Warren missed her moment in 2016, and there’s reason to be skeptical of her prospective candidacy in 2020.”

“She has become a divisive figure,” they added.

As Hillary Clinton demonstrated, you don’t have to have grassroots excitement or progressive bona fides to win the Democratic nomination. Bernie Sanders had both and she still beat him (with a little unauthorized help from the DNC).  But if Hillary couldn’t generate excitement, she could generate something else:

Fear. Few people wanted to cross Hillary Clinton, and fewer still wanted to fight against the first woman POTUS nominee of a major party among Democrats so focused on identity politics.

Liz Warren, unfortunately, has none of those advantages. There’s no cost to crossing her, there are at least three other women on the potential-candidates list, and the glass ceiling (for the nomination, anyway) has already been broken.

Four years ago, the chant was “Run Warren Run!”

Today, it’s closer to “Why, Liz? Why?”

In a Facebook post Thursday morning, two-term Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick made it official: He will not be running for president in 2020.

“After a lot of conversation, reflection and prayer, I’ve decided that a 2020 campaign for president is not for me. I’ve been overwhelmed by advice and encouragement from people from all over the country, known and unknown,” Patrick wrote.  “But knowing that the cruelty of our elections process would ultimately splash back on people whom Diane and I love, but who hadn’t signed up for the journey, was more than I could ask.”

In doing so, Patrick confirmed the suspicions of some doubters who questioned whether the famously thin-skinned governor was prepared for the rough-and-tumble of a national campaign–particularly one that might involve taking on Donald Trump. Patrick was known for angry outbursts over relatively mild media criticism and personal animosity against members of the press. As Jon Keller, the well-respected political reporter at Boston’s CBS affiliate put it in 2012:  “Deval Patrick has a lot of attributes, but thick skin is not one of them.”

Director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center David Paleologos tells NHJournal that Patrick was “one of ten strong Democrats who had a path to score Democratic Primary victories in the three early states and to ultimately take on President Trump.”  According to Paleologos, the immediate beneficiaries of his decision are his fellow New Englanders  Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and African-American candidates, “especially Cory Booker.”

In his Facebook statement, Patrick said he believes “Democrats have a clear chance not just to win [people’s] votes but to win their respect and earn their help by showing up everywhere, engaging everyone, and making our case.”

“America feels more ready than usual for big answers to our big challenges. That’s an exciting moment that I hope we don’t miss. I hope to help in whatever way I can. It just won’t be as a candidate for president,” Patrick said.

Multiple media reports confirm that former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick will not be running for president in 2020, despite having started a successful political PAC and Patrick’s standing as the top pick inside ObamaWorld.

“If true, this news takes off the board one of ten strong Democrats who had a path to score Democratic primary victories in the three early states and to ultimately take on President Trump,” David Paleologos, Director
of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told InsideSources.  “The windfall beneficiaries regionally are Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.  Among African-American voters, especially men, Corey Booker benefits.”

Patrick, a two-term Democrat who made the counter-intuitive move to Bain Capital—the same company Democrats vilified due to its connection to another former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney—has spoken openly about considering a 2020 POTUS bid and the “encouragement I’ve been getting from a number of places and source,” including from high-dollar Democratic donors.

In addition, Patrick’s political action committee, the Reason To Believe PAC, was a success. According to data at OpenSecrets.org, the PAC raised more than $500,000 in 2018 (NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s raised less than one-tenth that amount.) And according to the PAC’s website, “Reason To Believe endorsed 27 progressive candidates and 3 ballot initiatives. 17 won their races.”

But the most significant encouragement came from people close to former President Barack Obama. According to reporting by Politico, Obama was “nudging him to run…Patrick is ObamaWorld’s clear and away 2020 favorite.”   Close Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett in particular has been pushing a Patrick bid, calling a Deval Patrick presidency “what my heart desires.”

“Deval would make an outstanding President. He’d make a terrific candidate,” Jarrett has said.

And just weeks ago, the New Yorker ran a profile of Patrick that included the intriguing news that Michelle Obama had met with Deval’s wife Diane to encourage her to support a presidential bid.  According to their reporting, Diane did just that.

And yet Patrick is taking a pass on 2020.

There are many reasons for people not to run for office. Michael Avenatti used concerns from his family–the classic (and frequently insincere) reason for bowing out. That does not appear to be the case for Deval Patrick.

One reason, however, may have been his weakness among Democrats in his home state of Massachusetts. Patrick has never been in the top tier in national polls of potential 2020 candidates, but that’s to be expected in a field of more than 30 candidates. But a September poll of Massachusetts Democrats showing just 38 percent thought he should even run, while about 48 percent  were opposed–is hardly a ringing endorsement. And a more recent UMass poll of Bay State Democrats put the former governor in single digits.

He is expected to make a formal announcement of his decision not to run, perhaps later this week.

Lots of 2020 news for New Hampshire, starting with the departure of 2018’s Summer Superstar, Michael Avenatti.  The L.A. lawyer had an electric effect on the crowds at Democratic events in New Hampshire, and some longtime Granite State politicos had high praise for him.

Michael Avenatti works the crowd at a NH Democratic fundraiser in August, 2018.

Today, however, Avenatti announced on Twitter that he’s out of the 2020 race.

“After consultation with my family and at their request, I have decided not to seek the Presidency of the United States in 2020. I do not make this decision lightly — I make it out of respect for my family.”

In addition to his pledge to keep representing adult film actress Stormy Daniels in her legal battle with President Trump, Avenatti also reiterated something he told NHJournal in an interview over the summer:

“I remain concerned that the Democratic Party will move toward nominating an individual who might make an exceptional President but has no chance of actually beating Donald Trump,” Avenatti said. “The party must immediately recognize that many of the likely candidates are not battle-tested and have no real chance of winning. We will not prevail in 2020 without a fighter. I remain hopeful the party finds one.”

Avenatti suggested to NHJournal that the right fighter for the Democrats was…Michael Avenatti. But he’s out now, and while some are dismissing it as “dropping out before getting in,” in fact Avenatti started a political action committee– FIGHT PAC (motto: “Join the Fight Club”) and even ran an ad:

Interestingly, Avenatti was still talking up his prospects as a POTUS hopeful as recently as last night, tweeting out a national poll that had him at 2 percent and the comment “Better than Trump polled in 2015.”

Ah, but there is that whole “arrested for domestic violence” thing, so…

Oh, and about that poll Avenatti tweeted. Check it out, and look for the names “Warren” and “O’Rourke.”

That’s the Harvard/Harris poll. Here’s another version, but with Hillary Clinton added:

Notice a trend? Despite the fact that she’s been a darling of progressives for nearly a decade and he came out of nowhere over the summer, Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke is leading Sen. Elizabeth Warren in both polls.

Here’s another poll:

Aha, Warren’s beating Beto! Albeit by a point, but hey!

Wait. Check again. This is a poll of Democrats…IN MASSACHUSETTS.  Warren is essentially tied with a previously unknown congressman from Texas, in her home state. That’s not good. And smart people are starting to notice.

Harry Enten, former FiveThirtyEight numbers cruncher now at CNN, has a piece entitled “Some 2020 Warning Signs Elizabeth Warren Needs to Pay Attention to — Stat.” He points out that, not only is her polling underwhelming, but that her performance in her 2o18 re-election bid was uninspiring, too.

Is there really a bout of BetoMania spreading through the New Hampshire Democratic party?

Democratic Party activist Jay Surdukowski sure hopes so.  The Concord attorney has been pushing for the Texas congressman, Senate candidate, and political phenom to make his way to the Granite State.  Thus far, Rep. O’Rourke (whose real name is Francis Robert) hasn’t responded to any of the invitations from New Hampshire, but the conversation alone is generating news at Politico and CNBC.

(Longtime New Hampshire media hand James Pindell crankily tweeted “Didn’t realize unanswered invites were news but here we are.”)

So, is O’Rourke a real player in New Hampshire? The obvious–and obviously true–answer is that it’s way too early to say. “There’s a lot of chatter and a lot of buzz about a lot of people,” one Democratic insider told NHJournal. “Have I heard Beto’s name? Sure. I’ve also heard Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown.  Most New Hampshire Democrats are waiting to meet these people, look them in the eye, watch them campaign.”

On the other hand, how many of those people have fans posting Facebook pages about them? Or have political activists in New England start a PAC (“Draft Beto 2020”) to encourage them to run?

And then there’s the fact that, despite being a political unknown just a year ago, Rep. O’Rourke is near the top of (very early) polling for the Democratic nomination, ahead of big names like Warren, Harris and Booker.

This weekend, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard–who has actually talked about possibly running in 2020— is coming to New Hampshire to talk to voters. And yet it’s safe to say that more Democrats this week will be talking about the outgoing Congressman from Texas than the incumbent Congresswoman from Hawaii.

Why? In part it’s because O’Rourke is a legitimate political talent.  Jeff Roe, Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign manager, said after his candidate’s narrow victory over Beto: “The Democrats don’t have anybody like him,” Roe said. “I’ve seen all of them. They don’t have anyone of his caliber on the national stage. I pray for the soul of anyone who has to run against him in Iowa in 453 days.”

But it’s also more than that. O’Rourke is a talented progressive politician, at a moment when the party’s base is hungry for progressive leadership.  Bernie Sanders hit the right notes, but voting for Bernie was voting for the progressive platform alone. O’Rourke brings the Left’s ideology, but adds charisma, skills and–let’s face it–sex appeal.

“Beto is exciting, he’s articulate, he’s passionate,” New Hampshire progressive activist and broadcaster Arnie Arnesen told NHJournal.  “But he also used his time in the limelight to speak to the future. So even though he was running against one of the most hated Republicans there is, he didn’t use that fact as an excuse to moderate his message or soften his agenda.”

“And that’s a wonderful thing,” Arnesen said.

Not everyone agrees. Chicago Mayor and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel responded to the Beto craze this way:

“If Beto O’Rourke wants to go and run for president, God bless him, he should put his hat in and make his case. But, he lost. You don’t usually promote a loser to the top of party.”

Longtime New Hampshire Democratic player Jim Demers, who has publicly expressed support for Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ),  is more moderated in his views:

“I think Beto O’Rourke has a few interesting options. Some people would like to see him run for President, others think he is in a very strong position to challenge John Cornyn for the Senate seat in Texas in 2020,” Demers told NHJournal.

“Regardless, I hope Democrats will take the pledge not to devour each other in the presidential race and to stand united when the nominee is selected. The goal is to change the occupant in The White House, period.”

Are New Hampshire Democrats ready to give that job to a guy from Texas? Whose entire political resume is three terms in Congress and a losing bid for the US Senate?

“I’m not sure I couldn’t be convinced Beto O’Rourke should be President,” the Democratic insider told NHJournal.

And given how many big Democratic names are on the 2020 list, and how little New Hampshire Democrats actually know about O’Rourke, that’s something.