Who are the Democrat frontrunners for 2020?
A great majority of Democrats believe that what their party needs is an influx of new faces for the coming 2020 presidential race. According to a survey by Rasmussen Reports, 73 percent of Likely Democratic Voters believe the party should look for new faces for the 2020 race. Of those polled, 16 percent disagree and thus prefer familiar faces from races past.
The Rasmussen poll also indicated that a majority of Democrats don’t want Hillary Clinton on the ticket. Among all likely voters, 65 percent say Democrats should find a new face for 2020, while only 19 percent believe the party nomination should go to someone who has run for the White House before. As for Clinton, 58 percent believe she has been bad for the Democratic Party, while only 22 percent think she has been good for Democrats.
The Washington Post averred that Oprah Winfrey does not wish to run for the White House. She has never held office, even though she has expressed support for Democrats such as Barack Obama in the past and has instant name recognition. She has said that she expects God to tell her whether she should run. But she has not heard from Him yet. As for running for the White House, Winfrey recently told British Vogue: “I would not be able to do it. It's not a clean business. It would kill me."
However, Steve Bannon -- who briefly worked on the Trump campaign and at the White House -- predicted that Winfrey could be President Donald Trump's toughest challenger in 2020 . Bannon said that Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or any of the other Democratic hopefuls pale in comparison. On CNBC on Wednesday night, Bannon said, "I think we're in a different era," and added, “I think we're in an era that media and understanding media and understanding how to communicate on a mass basis to the American people is so much more important than being in a state legislature."
All the same, Bannon said he believes that Trump will be reelected. Even so, Bannon said that other non-politicians to watch are actor Dwayne Johnson (a.k.a. The Rock) and businessman and Mark Cuban. "Don't dismiss people today that are either executives that understand media or people that are media types," Bannon told show host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. "Do not think that those people can't somehow start to get traction, more so than some guys in the U.S. Senate."
Democrat Gov. Bullock has three more years to go in his term, having already served one term in an overwhelmingly Republican state. He won reelection by four percentage points in the same year that Donald Trump carried Montana by 21 points. While he professes agnosticism about running for the White House, he did make a stop in Iowa during the 2016 primary season. The Washington Examiner noted earlier in July that Bullock is getting closer to making a decision to run, however. However, as a sportsman and gun owner, he may be too moderate for Democrats who are currently trending to the left.
A two-term governor of Montana, a state that went for Trump in 2016, faces the challenge of being unknown and looking to take on fellow Democrats with more cachet. However, the Democrat party appears to be growing in that part of the country and Bullock has been on the move in early primary states in what looks like an effort to set the ground for 2020. He will need to offer a message that Democrats needs to set up their own big tent.
Patrick has support from Barack Obama’s supporters to run in 2020, but he has not been himself decisive about running. However, he has promised to make a decision by year’s end. He has campaigned for Democrats outside of Massachusetts. Last week, for example, Patrick stepped into a Texas House race in a competitive district that includes part of Dallas. He has also been in discussions with Beto O’Rourke -- the Democrat seeking to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R) .
Sen. Gillibrand had been closely tied to Bill and Hillary Clinton for years. Gillibrand replaced Hillary Clinton in the Senate and recently ran afoul of Bill Clinton after she said that he should have resigned the presidency in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. She has been on the left wing of the party regarding immigration, and was one of the first in Congress to call for the dissolution of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. At a May 2018 conference of the Center for American Progress, Gillibrand touched on familiar themes for Democrats: “What President Trump stands for undermines everything we value — whether you care about women’s rights or LGBTQ rights, clean air, clean water — literally everything we care about is at risk with this president.” The Washington Post recently named her one of the most likely candidates among prominent Democrats. In March, Gillibrand -- who was once counted as a moderate Democrat -- told The Nation magazine that she supports a federal job guarantee, which is an idea that not even socialist Bernie Sanders has openly advocated.
Recently, Harris told Kasie Hunt on MSNBC that she is "not ruling out" a 2020 presidential run. Also, she signed a book deal with Penguin Press for her upcoming “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey” which is due to come about just a few months before the Democratic primary season goes into full swing next year. According to Penguin, Harris will write about “the core truths” of the United States. Harris, a former Attorney General for the state of California, was the first in her caucus to call for the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen over the Trump administration’s policy regarding how it processes illegal immigrant children at the border. Besides, Harris has been making the kinds of junkets that can be expected of a presidential hopeful, including a recent trip to Nevada. Democrats in Michigan, a state that went for Trump (just barely), lionized her at party conference in May. Among Democrats, Harris appears to be the most active in going for the gold.
Harris comes from a state where Democrat donors have deep pockets, where she will have to dig if she does run. And her law-and-order background as a prosecutor may earn her support from moderates.
Sometimes derided as “Fauxcahontas” for her as-yet uncorroborated claims of Native American ancestry, Warren has continued to be a progressive pacesetter. She was an early advocate of abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) , also known as ICE. In what some analysts claim is the clearest sign she has yet given of her presidential ambitions, Warren said in a speech earlier this year that “No one — not even the president of the United States — will ever take that part of me away,” in a reference to President Trump’s use of the “Pocahontas” nickname for her. And unlike 2016, when she did little to convince anyone that she had presidential ambitions, Warren is now making moves to suggest that she will enter the hustings in 2020, having reached out to politicos in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
But even though he is not technically a Democrat, Sanders remains one of the most beloved in the Democrat party and still enjoys favorable ratings. In the 2016 Democrat primary vote, he garnered 43 percent. And he can be credited for starting the leftward drift of the Democrat party since then. But as a white male, and an also-ran, Democrats may not see him as a fresh face anymore.
Booker, a former mayor of Newark, is currently focused on helping fellow Democrats get re-elected in 2018. That being said, Democrats are known to nominate first full-term black senators who have recently given a big Democratic National Convention speech. (Remember who?) But because he is considered a moderate in the Democrat party, Booker will have to work hard to allay concerns among leftists that he is too close to Wall Street.
Barack Obama’s sidekick may not really fit in with the current Democrat Party. At 75, he is a white male who has been in politics for more than 40 years. But...he is on the top of early polls of voters looking at the 2020 lineup. Biden is leading in national polls, early primary state polls, and it a possible matchup against President Trump. Even though there is no guarantee he can win the party nomination, there are indications that he will keep his hand in until the end. After all, he did and in a matchup against Trump. That's no guarantee Biden wins the nomination -- but if history holds, it's an indicator he'll be right there until the end. A Harvard/CAPS poll showed recently that one-third of Democrats favor Biden over Hillary Clinton for 2020.
President Trump is unconcerned. In an interview with CBS that aired on Thursday, the president said that he would like to run against any Democrat, but is especially confident about Biden. "I dream about Biden. That's a dream," Trump said. "Look, Joe Biden ran three times. He never got more than 1 percent and President Obama took him out of the garbage heap, and everybody was shocked that he did. I'd love to have it be Biden."
Landrieu, the scion of a political family that includes his father (a former mayor of the Big Easy) and a sister who was a U.S Senator for Louisiana, was once mentioned by former President Barack Obama as exemplifying the future of their part. He rules over a majority-black city that is still recuperating from Hurricane Katrina and decades of corruption and mismanagement. Landrieu was lauded by progressives and ethnic group advocates for tearing down the city’s historic monuments to the Confederacy. This year he went on a media tour for his new book, “In the Shadow of Statues” and was the headliner at this year’s Gridiron Dinner in Washington. On the “The Daily Show,” he acknowledged applause when show host Trevor Noah called on him to run in 2020. In March, Landrieu said “never say never” when asked if he will run.
Brown has a liberal record and comes from a state that is essential to any presidential race. He has not publicly enunciated any interest in the White House, being occupied with now with a re-election campaign as senior U.S. Senator for Ohio. CNN suggests that Democrats are not keen on nominating a white man for 2020. And Brown has had to dodge a 26-year-old claim that he physically assaulted a former wife. In his re-election bid, Brown leads Republican Rep. James Renacci by double digits in all recent polls.
Holder has been making the rounds on late-night television and has been unstinting in his condemnations of President Trump. He is likely to be seen as Barack Obama’s favorite in the coming presidential race. When he was asked in New Hampshire recently about challenging the current president, he said: "Two guys from Queens. That would be interesting. New Yorkers know how to talk to other New Yorkers." He also recently said that he will make a decision by the end of the year whether “whether there is another chapter in my government service.” But he currently appears to be focusing on his role in helping Democrats challenge the coming redistricting across the country as a result of the 2020 Census.