Those stances from O’Rourke include:
Supporting the abolition of for-profit and private prisons.
Supporting a ban on so-called assault weapons. Supporting the elimination of bail sentences that require people to pay money to be released from jail ahead of trial.
Criticizing not only Trump’s border wall, but also some of the existing barriers on the U.S.-Mexico border and the increase in border security spending over the last decade. (“Yes, absolutely, I’d take the wall down,” he said in February, referring to the border fencing in the El Paso region.)
Supporting the impeachment of President Trump (O’Rourke took this stance during his Senate campaign. I doubt that he will push this issue during his presidential run, but it was somewhat surprising that he adopted it last year. Other Democrats, like 2020 hopeful Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, didn’t take this stance even as they were running in more liberal states than Texas.).
Supporting a proposal to allow anyone who wants to enroll in a Medicare-like insurance plan the option to do so.
Supporting an increase of the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
Supporting marijuana legalization.
Opposing the death penalty.
Supporting NFL players kneeling during the national anthem in protest of racism.
Describing himself as benefiting from “white privilege.” [...]
O’Rourke has also adopted some bipartisan rhetorical flourishes, emphasizing that he wants politics to be less divisive and more focused on finding common ground. And no one should ignore his fairly centrist political history. He wasn’t known as a liberal firebrand and often eschewed liberal positions during his political rise in Texas. In Congress, his voting record put him to the right of the average House Democrat in 2017-18. He was a member of the New Democrat Coalition, a more centrist wing of the party. [...]
I might classify O’Rourke as fairly liberal on issues around culture and identity and left-leaning but maybe not particularly liberal — compared with, say, Sanders or Elizabeth Warren — on economic issues. (Cory Booker and Kamala Harris probably fall in this camp with O’Rourke.) Part of what’s confusing in assessing O’Rourke’s ideology is that the results are different depending on what benchmark you choose. Is he liberal compared with previous Democratic presidential candidates? Yes. Is he liberal compared with the activists dominating the discourse in the party now? No. [...]
And it’s not just O’Rourke’s pro-immigration and pro-Latino stands that would likely be heavily contested in a general election. Ted Cruz, whom O’Rourke unsuccessfully challenged in the Texas Senate race last year, highlighted O’Rourke’s defense of NFL player protests during the 2018 campaign, suggesting that the Republican thought the issue would help him more than it would help O’Rourke. And we haven’t seen a recent presidential candidate have to defend opposition to the death penalty (neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton ran for president as death penalty opponents). But O’Rourke seems to have left himself little wiggle room by saying that his stance is based on “moral grounds.”
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