Why are you running for president? Drumbeat grows for some 2020 Democrats to shift sights

Let’s help them get one: https://t.co/aYjv5ZrhGDSuch is the political atmosphere for Bullock and fellow embattled presidential hopefuls John Hickenlooper and Beto O’Rourke — three candidates whose White House bids are languishing but are seen by party leaders and Democratic voters as attractive candidates to take on vulnerable incumbent Senate Republicans.Unless they find momentum in the weeks ahead, political analysts and party operatives say the trio will find themselves facing two difficult questions: What are you still doing in the race and why aren’t you running for Senate?“What I keep hearing is that people wish Bullock would run against Daines,” said Carl Donovan, a state committeeman for the Cascade County (Montana) Democrats. The Colorado Democratic Party doesn’t decide who it will put on the ballot until April — meaning that Hickenlooper could theoretically get beyond the March Super Tuesday contests before making a decision.He said it: Trump says he's 'so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius' in tweet bashing 2020 DemsWhen Democrats will vote: When are the 2020 presidential election primaries?Veteran Texas Democratic operative Harold Cook said O’Rourke and fellow Texan and White House contender Julian Castro, whose polling has also hovered in the low single-digits, could face difficult questions about the viability of their candidacies following the Detroit debates this month.O’Rourke had received more attention as a possible Senate candidate than Castro, a former Housing and Urban Development secretary and mayor of San Antonio, in part because of O’Rourke’s strong performance in the 2018 race against Cruz. Joe Lieberman was at the top of the Democratic heap around this moment in 2003.But the eventual nominees in all those cycles — President Trump in 2016, President Obama in 2008 and Sen. John Kerry in 2004 — while not frontrunners at this point in their races were not registering the low level of support that Bullock, Hickenlooper and O’Rourke are seeing.Bullock has said flatly that he’s not interested in the Senate and that his background as a Democratic governor who has appealed to voters in a conservative state makes him uniquely qualified to take on Trump.“I think we are going to have a lot of good candidates to take on Daines,” Bullock said upon launching his campaign in May. I think what we have done in Montana, both electorally and in getting government to work, is something that a lot of people can learn from."Hickenlooper has similarly said that his experience as a governor leads him to believe he’s suited to serve in the White House.He’s pushed back against the notion that the party needs him to run for the Senate with a large field of high-profile Colorado Democrats already announcing their candidacy.“There are several other top-flight candidates running for Senate in Colorado, I think any one of which could beat Cory Gardner,” Hickenlooper said during a recent campaign stop in Des Moines.