The “Who is running in 2020?” tea leaves thread, Part 3

[I Can Now Die Happy]

Maybe this doesn't really need to be said, but one last thing I'll mention before I call it a night is that while the "no chance" candidates like Klobuchar, Gabbard, Brown, Delaney, Ojeda, etc have practically no chance at winning the nomination, they can be useful to the Democratic nominee by inserting narratives into the nationwide political dialogue that are productive. For instance, Brown and Ojeda can push the "Trump is a conman who mislead the white working class into supporting a candidate who backed the Paul Ryan agenda, what could we have expected from a billionaire" narrative, which if executed well can be decisive in bringing back the WI-MI-PA trio back into the Democratic fold. Gabbard can do the same for the "Trump promised to end unnecessary foreign intervention but bombed Syria" narrative. On the flipside, Klobuchar and Delaney might end up hurting the Democratic nominee by touting the "we can't get too extreme for the American people" narrative, which will definitely be something the likes of Bernie, Warren, Harris, etc will have to contend with.

Time will tell as to how all this plays out. I wouldn't be surprised if none of that works out and 2020 becomes a Trump friendly environment.

[I Can Now Die Happy]

Why are so many Democrats running? Such a fractured field may only end up helping Trump.

I mean the 2016 Republican primary was quite fractured as well. It didn’t seem to hurt Trump in the slightest.

It actually did but he won in spite of it. If by magic you remove all the intraparty disputes in the 2016 Republican Primaries, Trump has a real shot at winning New Hampshire and Minnesota as well at the very least. There was a small percentage of the electorate who voted for McMullin, Johnson, and Hillary who might very well have voted for Trump were it not for the grudges they hadn't let go of when he beat their favored GOP candidate.

There is a possibility that we see that same phenomenon cost the Democrats a victory in 2020. For instance, a small percentage of the electorate may opt to vote for non-major party centrist candidates or even Trump himself if someone like Bernie wins. You can also have the opposite scenario where a small percentage of the electorate may opt to vote for the Green Party or other non-major party progressive candidates if someone like Biden wins. Even if it's someone who isn't quite a centrist like Kamala or Beto, the dynamics of the campaign process could lead to them being too tainted by what they had to do to beat Bernie. There were Bernie supporters who stayed home rather than vote for Hillary in 2016 and while those same people are probably less likely to do the same in 2020 if the candidate isn't Bernie, don't discount the possibility of that happening again. Don't also discount the possibility of the #NeverBernie crowd refusing to united behind him even if he is their best chance at unseating Trump.

[I Can Now Die Happy]

Great profile on Bennet from the Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/senator-michael-bennet-weighing-run-president/583993/

POLK CITY, Iowa—Sitting under a framed ticket from an old Obama town-hall meeting, down in the basement of a farmhouse surrounded by snowy fields of corn and soybeans, I tell Michael Bennet that an Iowa Democrat who’d come to hear him speak compared him to pea soup. Good pea soup, hearty. But still pea soup, in a 2020 primary field that has sizzling fajitas and cake on the table.

...

Bennet is on edge. He has been warning of the destruction of democracy for years. He thinks he’s more Cassandra than the boy who cried wolf, as he points out when I remind him that in October 2017, he warned that Trump’s decision to cancel the protections for Dreamers needed to be fixed immediately. It hasn’t been. “These issues are tearing at the heart of who we are,” he says.

If Bennet were somehow to obtain the Democratic nomination, I wouldn't have a problem voting for him. He, along with Hickenlooper, Biden, Bullock, Klobuchar, and Brown, would all receive my vote over Trump. However, none of the ones that I listed (except for Biden), has any shot at getting the nomination.

Would you vote for Trump over Bernie? Or Trump over a progressive candidate who you think needs to be stopped, or because you don't want a Democratic President with a Democratic congress?