The “Who is running in 2020?” tea leaves thread, Part 2

[sparkey]

Bill Weld positioning himself for a possible 2020 bid for the Libertarian nomination:

https://reason.com/blog/2018/05/02/bill-weld-lays-groundwork-for-2020-liber

He's acting like he wants it, and pretty much all of his recent policy reconsiderations (especially on guns and foreign policy) have been in directions that would play better with the LP's base. He'll be 75, but I guess that's not too much older than Trump, and he's actually younger than Sanders and Biden.

If he doesn't run, it will be interesting to see who he throws his weight behind. Tom "Demon Sheep" Campbell was at the same CA LP convention...

[sparkey]

Several possible candidates for the Libertarian nomination:
Governor Bill Weld (Massachusetts)
Congressman Joe Walsh (Illinois)
Congressman Justin Amash (Michigan)
Congressman Tom Campbell (California)

Weld and Campbell are definitely plausible, and could even be a ticket. McAfee has also announced a 2020 run, as have Adam Kokesh and Zoltan Istvan. I think Walsh likes Trump too much to run against him though, and Amash likely has a different political path envisioned.

Relevant: George Will all but endorses Weld.

[sparkey]

The former Vice Chair of the Libertarian Party Arvin Vohra announced tonight at the party convention (after losing his seat as Vice Chair) that he's running for President in 2020.

Vohra served as a moderately popular Vice Chair until he made some rather controversial decisions like stating that 15-year-olds have the right to date/have sex with 25-year-olds, and appearing on a white nationalist podcast.

Vohra announced in a really bizarre way, to top it off. He was nominated for an at-large position on the Libertarian National Committee, and announced so that he could ask if it was a conflict of interest to both run for President and be on the LNC. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11923&v=v5BOEDjFZ5E

He has very little chance. He is widely considered an embarrassment within the party now. He not only lost re-election to Vice Chair by a wide margin (barely edging out James "the stripper" Weeks for 4th place on the next-to-last ballot, and only 10% on the final ballot), he also lost the at-large bid, placing 12th when he needed 5th or better.

[sparkey]

Reason.com does a writeup of Vohra's run for the LP nomination: http://reason.com/blog/2018/07/06/controversialist-arvin-vohra-announces-2

The LP's announced field already looks like:

• Joe Exotic
• Zoltan Istvan
• Adam Kokesh
• John McAfee (assuming he doesn't go independent)
• Arvin Vohra
• ...plus 10+ additional nobodies

If the field stayed that way, it would probably come down to Kokesh vs. McAfee, although it's tough to find the most "acceptable" candidate out of that list of eccentrics and radicals.

Fortunately, it's becoming more and more clear that Bill Weld is going to announce eventually as well, and he's been doing a good job of alleviating concerns in the party. Reason.com has another writeup that talks about how the race for Party Chair became somewhat of a referendum on Bill Weld's involvement with the party, and the result was an easy victory for pro-Weld incumbent Sarwark over (Ron Paul/Tom Woods backed) anti-Weld challenger Smith. That doesn't mean that Weld has an easy path to the LP nod for 2020, considering that Sarwark also had a dominating debate performance over Smith. But the anti-Weld faction will need better candidates than Kokesh, McAfee, and Vohra to stop him.

[sparkey]

Gary Johnson cracks the door back open for... something: http://thejacknews.com/politics/gary-johnson-considering-run-public-office/

Seems like he's still not going to run for President, but he sees something else he wants to run for. I doubt he wants to try for Udall's Senate seat, considering that he has literally said before "I'd be terrible at the job" when asked if he would run for Senate. Maybe he's interested in the VP nomination from the LP this time?