If you asked me a year ago, I would have rated Kasich low on the list of 2016 GOP presidential candidates most likely to run again in 2020. I didn't think that Kasich was desperate for the job in the same way that, say, Marco Rubio was. As with Jeb Bush, I wondered if it was just that the people around him talked him into it. (And of course, unlike Cruz and Rubio, Kasich's starting to get up there in age, as he'll be in his late 60s in 2020.)
But now I guess Kasich really does want to be president, as he's signalling an interest in another run more strongly than anyone else from the 2016 field other than Cruz (and Rubio, sort of...though that's in hibernation while Rubio runs for reelection). Will be interesting to see where this goes. With (presumably) no Bush running in 2020, will there be a sizeable contingent of donors rallying around Kasich as the "electable" option for 2020?
He's gonna run again, but he's a bad fit for today's GOP. Even if Trump had not run, Kasich would not have been the nominee; it would have been either Rubio or Cruz. He's not considered conservative enough, and his policies on medicaid expansion, common core, and illegal immigration really upset the base. Having said that, if Trump loses in an epic landslide, it is possible that the GOP learns its lesson and turns to someone like Kasich (similar to the Democrats' mea culpa after getting their butt kicked by Nixon, Reagan, and HW Bush, and turned to a moderate southern democrat who wanted to move the party to the center).
