Tim Alberta is chief political correspondent for Politico Magazine.

DES MOINES, Iowa—Anderson Cooper commences the presidential primary debate in Westerville, Ohio, by asking Elizabeth Warren whether Democrats should bother impeaching President Donald Trump given that voters will decide his fate at the ballot box a year from now. It’s a layered question, one every candidate is eager to take a swing at. Sensing as much, the achromatic CNN anchor assures Warren’s neighbors onstage they’ll get a chance. “You’re all going to get in on this,” Cooper says.

Nearly 700 miles away, seated at a faux mahogany table inside Room 209 of the Embassy Suites in downtown Des Moines, one viewer struggles to suppress his frustration. “Oh, that’s good to know,” Michael Bennet says, his cheeks stuffed with pizza, slapping the table as he addresses Cooper’s image on the television 10 feet away. “We’re all going to get in on this.”


The Westerville gathering features a record-setting swarm of candidates—12—but Bennet, a Colorado senator, is not one of them. Lagging far behind his primary opponents in fundraising and struggling to break 1 percent in most national and state polls, Bennet failed to meet the criteria set by the Democratic National Committee to qualify for a podium. So, instead of standing before the cameras and speaking to an audience of millions around the world, Bennet is sitting with me, munching on Fong’s street taco pizza, sipping a Lagunitas IPA from the bottle and wondering why Beto O’Rourke belongs onstage and he doesn’t.

“We’re tied, you know,” Bennet says, nodding toward the former Texas congressman. He flashes a grin. “Or at least within the margin of error.”

Tim Alberta

Bennet’s failure to earn entrée to the event owes mainly to his manifest limitations as a candidate. He scarcely exudes charisma. He struggles to hit rhetorical high notes. He does not look or dress the part of a presidential contender.

At the same time, Bennet’s absence from the limelight Tuesday evening—and those very weaknesses that are to blame—reflects an alarming truth about the state of modern politics.

It’s true Bennet will never make a crowd swoon or send chills down an Iowa caucusgoer’s spine. It’s also true he would probably make a fine president. In the decade he has served in the U.S. Senate, Bennet has earned the reputation of a sober-minded, results-oriented workhorse, someone who is smart and studied and reliably well-prepared. The 54-year-old former school superintendent is a liberal—there is no questioning this among his peers—but wherever there is a battle being waged, whether over immigration or gun control or climate change, Bennet can be found in the deal-making trenches, laboring to build a bipartisan coalition in pursuit of a workable outcome rather than lobbing bombs from the safety of an ideological bunker.

The instincts that guide Bennet—being pragmatic, deliberative, restrained—are what many Americans say are precisely what’s needed to run the White House. But now, perhaps more than ever, those instincts are the opposite of what’s needed to win the White House. Once upon a time, there was a limited return on investing in outrage and demagoguery; statesmen were in high demand no matter the supply. That’s no longer the case, and not simply because a celebrity showman named Donald Trump is president of the United States. The painful reality of this political moment slides over Bennet like a barbed-wire blanket as he flops onto the couch and kicks off his faded brown dress shoes, preparing for a three-hour reality-television show that will help determine who leads the free world.

All the more irksome to Bennet is the fact that five of his fellow senators are staring back at him from beneath the bright lights; he is the only member of the "world’s greatest deliberative body" seeking a promotion who is excluded from the festivities. Not only that, but the one whose brand of campaigning disturbs him the most—Warren, a Massachusetts populist—is continuing to evade questions about how she would pay for a "Medicare for All" program estimated to cost tens of trillions of dollars. Bennet predicted this would happen, and now, leaning forward in his seat, he shakes his head at Warren’s refusal to acknowledge her intent to raise taxes on working- and middle-class Americans. “At least Bernie’s been honest about it,” Bennet says. "The general election is too late for us to find out how Elizabeth is going to pay for these things."

At one point, when pressed by the moderators to give a yes-or-no answer to that question, Warren dodges yet again—and Bennet lets escape an audible groan. The Massachusetts senator says she knows what voters care about, having hosted scores of town hall meetings, visited 27 states and taken 70,000 selfies, “which must be the new measure of democracy,” she quips.

Bennet falls back into the couch. “I hope not,” he sighs.

A little while later, as the debate goes to its first commercial break, Bennet stands up and wanders over to the door. “Let’s see if the people downstairs are watching,” he says, turning the handle and stepping out to the balcony. The senator glances one floor down to the open atrium of the hotel, where a large crowd is gathered, drinks in hand, staring up at a massive television screen. “Baseball,” Bennet says, pumping a fist.

But what if they were watching? What would be their takeaway from the first hour? What is Bennet’s takeaway, as a voter and as a presidential candidate?

He sits down and thinks, taking more than 30 seconds to ponder. Finally, he shrugs. “More taxes.”



***

“I don’t get it,” Bennet says, arching an eyebrow. “Why is this her … thing?”

Now he’s talking about Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii congresswoman whose support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad continues to be a source of curiosity within the Democratic Party. She is denouncing the presence of American troops in the Middle East and blaming the U.S. for its part in a supposed “regime-change war” in Syria. Bennet cannot fathom Gabbard’s position, nor can he understand the appeal she holds with whatever thin slice of the primary electorate propelled her onto Tuesday night’s stage.

“How much does it piss you off,” I ask, “that she’s onstage and you’re sitting here with me?”

He forces a smile. “I just miss Marianne Williamson.”

Indeed, with the self-help guru sidelined from Tuesday’s event, the designation of strangest participant belongs to Tom Steyer, the billionaire activist who effectively bought his way into the event and made no real impression other than to leave Twitter talking about his Christmas-choir necktie. At one point, when Steyer uses the phrase “frenemies” in discussing U.S. foreign policy, Bennet glances from side to side, as if to make sure we had heard the same thing, then puts on his glasses and burrows into his iPhone, muttering something indiscernible.

And then there is O’Rourke. It doesn’t seem the Colorado senator has anything personal against the former Texas congressman; it’s just that Bennet, like many Democrats, is annoyed with what they see as O’Rourke’s habit of staking out irrational policy positions for the sake of going viral, saddling the party and its eventual nominee with baggage that won’t easily be shed. The most recent example was O’Rourke pledging at an LGBTQ forum to strip the tax-exempt status of churches that refuse to marry same-sex couples, a flagrantly unconstitutional idea with the potential to alienate white conservatives and black liberals alike. But Bennet is still hung up on O’Rourke’s line from the last presidential debate: “Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”

A few days after that debate, Bennet recalls, he was meeting with a group of blue-collar labor Democrats in New Hampshire. The group’s leader asked him, “Why are you talking about taking our guns?” When Bennet responded it was just one person, the man pushed back. Because nobody else on the stage challenged O’Rourke, the man said, they were perceived as agreeing with his stance. Bennet walked away from the exchange dazed and deeply concerned.

The irony is, Bennet isn’t a moderate on guns. He supports an assault-weapons ban and wants to outlaw high-capacity magazines. Coming from “a Western, pro-Second Amendment state” that implemented extensive gun-control measures after the mass shootings in Columbine and Aurora, Bennet believes there is a blueprint for the federal government to follow. But it requires building broad consensus and winning incremental battles, he says, starting with universal background checks, taking the long view of a problem that won’t be solved with sound bites or campaign slogans.

Looking on as Pete Buttigieg clashes with O’Rourke over this very topic, Bennet says he sides with the South Bend, Indiana, mayor. “I’m not saying, Don’t think about the big things,'” Bennet explains. “But we’ve got to focus on what we can do first.”

The discussion surrounding guns, Bennet fears, is symptomatic of a broader illness in today’s political climate. “This is becoming a competition to out-do each other in the Twitterverse, instead of actually addressing the problem,” he says. Noting how he’s held 10 years’ worth of town hall meetings and talked with thousands of gun-control activists, he says “90 percent of them” are focused on passing universal background checks—a readily attainable goal that has enormous public support. But now, because of the confiscation talk, “Trump can just say, ‘They’re all going to take your guns away,’” Bennet says, turning the discussion into a zero-sum game. “And the labor guys in Iowa and New Hampshire, that’s what they say. I just heard the same thing in Reno: ‘You’re going to take our guns away.’”

This, Bennet fears, is how Trump might luck into a second term. Oh, sure, the president will continue to scare moderates and independents with his erratic behavior. But Bennet wonders if Democrats might scare them even more—what with talk of seizing guns, banning fracking, guaranteeing health coverage to undocumented immigrants, raising taxes across the board, imposing political litmus tests on churches, and of course, eliminating private insurance for more than 150 million people.

“Just listen to this debate,” Bennet says, motioning toward the television. “Medicare for All shouldn’t even have made it to the debate stage. I mean, we’re a free country, and that’s fine. But of the Democrats who won in 2018, in those suburban districts, all but one person won their primary running on the public option—against candidates who supported Medicare for All. I understand this has been Bernie’s thing forever. But for some of the leading candidates to sign on to his bill gave it legitimacy. It’s just…”

He drifts off, shaking his head.

“We’re going to pick a policy we can’t even unify Democrats around, much less bring in others who could support it from the outside. Which means we’ll wind up fighting a losing battle for that instead of achieving the other stuff,” Bennet adds. "That’s not catering to the people I talk to at town halls; it’s for the people on Twitter and the people on cable news at night.”

As the debate approaches the two-hour mark, Bennet goes silent, gazing emotionlessly at the television for a prolonged stretch. Finally, I ask what’s on his mind. “I’m sitting here thinking, 'Who can beat Trump?'” he says. “Can any of these people beat Trump?”



***

What gets under Bennet’s skin, as he watches the debate unfold, is how Warren and Sanders implicitly cast their rivals as timid or beholden to the status quo because of fundamental policy disagreements. It’s a running theme of the 2020 primary competition, and for the first time Tuesday, several of the candidates, such as Buttigieg and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, push back forcefully.

Bennet was glad to see it—not just because he is a centrist at heart, but because he has grown suspicious of the business model associated with ideological purity. “I’m not sure this is about progressive vs. nonprogressive,” he says. “I think it’s about what will satisfy the social media interests on a given day.”

What does that mean? Do some of the Democrats not really believe what they’re proposing?

He opens another IPA and takes a swig. “If someone is proposing free college, which is a regressive policy, or debt forgiveness, which is a regressive policy—.” He stops and shakes his head. “I mean, single-payer, that’s been a progressive view forever. But now it’s embodied by Bernie’s very particular Medicare for All, which is an actual legislative proposal that has become the emblem for whether you’re woke or not woke, or progressive or not progressive during this primary.”

He continues, “The equities that are being satisfied are the responses that you get on social media and your ability to raise money on the internet. And that has led to people offering up policies that—.” He stops himself again. “You know, when Obama ran in 2008, there was an outer edge, because that political market could only bear so much. But this political Twitter market can never bear too much; the more extreme you are, the more rewarded you are.”

When I mention the cautionary tale of what has become of the modern Republican Party, Bennet acknowledges the parallels. But he sees one key difference. “Trump and McConnell don’t need a functioning democracy to achieve what they’re trying to achieve. Trump doesn’t care whether he has a functioning democracy or not, and McConnell doesn’t need one because it’s all about putting judges on the courts,” the senator says. “But if you actually want to fix the health care system, or deal with climate, or do the other things we want to do, you have to have a durable coalition of people that support you. … There’s been a complete breakdown in our exercise in self-governance. And that has created a vacuum into which the anti-government impulses of the country have flown, and now, the overpromising impulses have flown.”

Bennet says it wasn’t always this way. Reaching for the book he authored, “The Land of Flickering Lights,” he shares a passage describing how President Ronald Reagan worked with Democrats to pass critical bipartisan legislation and fortify the public’s confidence in government. He doesn’t seem to recognize the irony of giving a long, academic recitation—reading from a book, glasses over his nose—after acknowledging the political imperative of going viral.

What Bennet finds himself wondering these days is whether Democrats can win—much less govern—by pledging to do merely the possible. Whether they will be rewarded for telling voters what they need to hear, instead of what they want to hear.

“Barack Obama tried to do that, and that’s not ancient history,” Bennet says hopefully.

Isn’t it?

He thinks for a moment, then practically leaps from his seat, as though a light bulb hasn’t merely gone off but overheated and shattered inside of his brain. “Maybe it is. Maybe it is. Maybe it is. Because Barack Obama tried to do that, and he was rewarded with complete intransigence by the other side. He used to say when he was running for reelection that ‘the fever will break’ after he won reelection. But the fever has never broken. Not only has it not broken, Trump’s now in charge,” he says. “I think the real question for our democracy is, can our exercise in pluralism really continue under these circumstances?”

Bennet swears he’s an optimist; it’s what gets him out of bed in the morning. But as our conversation progresses, with the debate flickering toward its closing minutes, the senator sounds as pessimistic as any politician I’ve spoken with in the Trump era.

“We’ve been terribly careless with our democracy. I believe that Donald Trump could not get hired in almost any business in America—the HR implications alone would be enough not to hire him, not to mention you couldn’t listen to him all day long if you were at an insurance company or a loading dock. Like, ‘This fucking guy!’” Bennet sighs, throwing up his hands. “The only way he could get elected is we have sufficiently degraded view of our political institutions that we’re willing to put a guy in charge who we would never put in charge of anything else. And why? Because we want to blow the place up. And the conversations I have with people who voted for Trump is, ‘Congratulations, you achieved your objective. Now what?’”

Bennet glances at the television. His Democratic peers are entertaining the question of whether they would consider packing the Supreme Court. “And this is making it worse!” he growls, wagging a finger at the monitor.

Just then, right on cue, Cooper asks the candidates about the emerging divide in the party—on questions of ideology, but also of tactics. Former Vice President Joe Biden takes the opportunity to criticize the progressives flanking him, Sanders and Warren, singling out the latter for being “vague” about her plans. Bennet nods along in agreement. But he also winces during the remarks, as he has several times earlier in the night, an apparent reaction to Biden’s choppy and stilted speech pattern. It’s clear Bennet aligns himself with Biden on a great many issues. But it’s also clear Bennet, and at least a few others in the center-left space, wouldn’t be running if Biden were regarded as an imposing political force at 76 years old.

Responding to Biden’s critique of the left’s ability to defeat Trump, Sanders argued the 2020 election would be won by bringing in new voters. Bennet cannot stomach this assertion. “But do you bring them in with false promises?” he asks. “Is there another way of exciting people and getting them involved besides making false promises? I don’t know. But when you do make false promises, and they never get accomplished, it just breeds more cynicism. That’s how we got here.”

Bennet is growing more impatient. His dark hair, once neatly combed to the side, is frayed from his hands running through it; his pale blue shirt, once crisply ironed, is disheveled and mostly untucked. Finishing his beer and walking over to the door, Bennet glances down at the crowd and the big screen. “Still baseball,” he smiles.



***

Surely, there is every temptation to quit—to get back to Colorado, to sleep in his own bed, to spend more time with his family, to stop slogging from one small town to another, meeting with crowds of 10 or 20 in hopes of planting a seed that might sprout months later under the most unlikely of conditions.

Every politician has an ego; Bennet is no exception. Still, for the U.S. senator who refused to be photographed for the cover of his own book—surely a first in the annals of presidential campaigning—it seems there’s more at stake than personal vanity. Bennet is convincing when he says he’s genuinely concerned. It’s not simply about a country that’s losing its way, he says, but about a party that might snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2020.

“The people who have promised to deliver undeliverable things have had the jump on the rest of us. But the people in Iowa and New Hampshire, I think, are trying to figure out one thing, which is: How do we beat Donald Trump?” Bennet says. “That’s the question they’re trying to answer. And if I can hang in there long enough, and there’s change at the top of this field, there may be an opportunity to say, ‘Here I am.’”

Bennet knows he may never get the opportunity. But if he does—if things break just right, if Biden falters and neither Buttigieg nor Klobuchar nor any of the other moderates coalesce the support of the center-left—it would present the starkest of contrasts. Sure, on the substance, Warren or Sanders would represent the sharpest possible departure from the incumbent. But as a matter of style, of tone and of temperament, it’s fair to say Bennet is the antithesis of Trump. Making that argument might be his last best hope—assuming he can refine it.

“He’s incredible,” Bennet says of the president. “He’s got, ‘Build the wall.’ He’s got, ‘Lock her up.’ He’s got, ‘Make America Great Again.’ He’s got, ‘Drain the swamp.’”

What about Bennet?

He shrugs, staring ahead. “I got nothing.”