The 2020 Democratic presidential field is nearing its final
form, awaiting the all-but-certain entry of Joe Biden
to join a group that now numbers 15.
Another candidate or two may surface, but those persons will enter on
the fringe; all the big names have announced except for Biden. Said another way, it is highly likely that
the eventual nominee will be either Biden or one of the announced candidates,
and whoever that person is, at this very early stage of the proceedings, he or
she is the odds-on favorite to be the next President of the United States.
No new Republicans have ventured into the field to
challenge Donald Trump in the last month, thus leaving
former Massachusetts Governor William Weld as Trump’s
only GOP opponent at this point. But
others could become emboldened by a blazing Mueller report, or a sharp (and
unlikely) downturn in Trump’s approval rating within the GOP.
THE FIELD
The Democratic field was clarified in a busy month that saw
the entry of Senator Bernie Sanders, Washington
Governor Jay Inslee, former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, and most recently, Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke, as well announcements by a number of
potential candidates that they had decided to pass, including Michael Bloomberg, Sherrod Brown, and Jeff Merkley.
The four newest entrants joined eleven others who entered
the race in January and early February: Senators Elizabeth Warren,
Kamala Harris, Kristen Gillibrand,
Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker,
Representatives Tulsi Gabbard
and John Delaney, former HUD secretary Julian Castro, Mayor (of South Bend, Indiana) Pete Buttigeig, entrepreneur Andrew Yang,
and New Age lecturer Marianne Williamson.
Who else could enter?
Perhaps Montana Governor Steve Bullock, former
Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, Ohio
Congressman Steve Ryan, and even one or two
others. But the rationale for low
visibility players to make a go of it lessens everyday – what unique story can
they tell, or positioning can they find, in this bloated field?
The GOP side has far more time flexibility for the few
others that might challenge Trump, a group that includes Mitt Romney,
former Ohio governor John Kasich, Maryland
Governor Larry Hogan and former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake. But with
Weld in the race to rough up Trump a bit, they might all take a pass.
And Starbucks mogul Howard Schultz should
decide soon on his threatened independent run.
THE NUMBERS
The Democratic race is in three tiers now, with Joe Biden
and Bernie Sanders in the top group, well ahead of the field. They are followed by tier two, largely
comprised of the senators in the race, Harris, Warren, Booker and Klobuchar,
plus Beto O’Rourke. The last group is
made up of those mired in the “asterisk” zone, that is, barely registering at
all in the polls at this point. Senator
Gillibrand is in this group, along with the governors, reps and the
non-politicians.
This three-group tiering is true both nationally and in
Iowa. It is conventional to say that
Biden and Sanders are being carried mostly by name recognition, but time is
running out for that statement to really hold.
For one thing, that may make sense nationally, but these candidates
(with the exception of Beto) have been crisscrossing Iowa for some time now,
and have made their launch blitzes, to little effect. It may be early, but Biden has yet to launch,
which could give him a bump. Those
second tier candidates have to start some upward movement at some point.
Tiers
|
Candidates*
|
Average of Naional Polls
|
Iowa Polls
|
Tiers
|
|||||
Jan 1-15
|
Jan 16 - Feb 15
|
Feb 16 - Mar 15
|
DM Reg Dec 10-13, 2018
|
Emers. Jan 31 - Feb 2
|
DM Reg Mar 3-6
|
||||
Tier 1
|
Biden
|
28
|
29
|
29
|
32
|
29
|
27
|
Tier 1
|
|
Sanders
|
15
|
17
|
23
|
19
|
15
|
25
|
|||
Tier 2
|
Harris
|
4
|
11
|
11
|
5
|
18
|
7
|
Tier 2
|
|
Warren
|
6
|
7
|
7
|
8
|
11
|
9
|
|||
O'Rourke
|
8
|
7
|
6
|
11
|
6
|
5
|
|||
Booker
|
2
|
4
|
5
|
4
|
4
|
3
|
|||
Klobuchar
|
2
|
2
|
4
|
3
|
3
|
3
|
|||
Tier 3
|
Castro
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
1
|
Tier 3
|
|
Gillibrand
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
|||
Hickenlooper
|
0
|
1
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|||
Gabbard
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|||
Buttigeig
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|||
Inslee
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
1
|
|||
Delaney
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|||
Williamson
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|||
Yang
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|||
Other/NA
|
33
|
18
|
11
|
17
|
11
|
19
|
|||
* Chart excludes all
non-announced candidates except Joe Biden
|
|||||||||
Apart from their extremely high national profiles, Biden
from his VP years and Bernie for his 2016 run, the two represent the competing ideologies dominating Democratic debate.
Biden is the trusted centrist, the moderate, the let’s-reclaim-the-Midwest,
win-over-the-independents, get-back-to-Obama older wing of the party. Bernie, despite his age, is the darling of
the young progressives, the voice of the future, of the AOC acolytes, the big, bold
ideas, the get-our-base-excited wing. Biden
and Bernie are fighting for the soul of the party, and until one of the younger
crowd figures out how to muscle into that conversation, those two may simply
duke it out through June of 2020. And
they have been, with a few notable exceptions, mighty timid about defining themselves
along the ideological spectrum.
Sanders certainly got a nice bump from his launch, both
nationally and in Iowa, enough to pull within shouting distance of Biden. Elizabeth Warren is in the mix in the second
tier, but Bernie dominates her space as of now, despite the fact that she has
been in the public eye for quite some time.
The other second tier candidates are all trying to define themselves, or
deal with their weaknesses. Klobuchar,
in particular, is having difficulty shedding the “tough boss” story, with the
indelible image of her eating salad with a comb trailing her every move. (A staffer had failed to provide plastic
utensils, and got reamed out for it, with the comb being the substitute, which
the aide was forced to wash after the salad was consumed.)
Booker is trying to run a positive campaign in these
horrendously negative times, and each of Harris, Booker and O’Rourke are
resisting specifics and labels. The
anti-labeling frenzy reached a new low when Hickenlooper, a
businessperson-turned-politician, in a launch interview with Joe Scarborough,
refused to say he was a capitalist not once, but three times, looking sillier
each time. This simply may not be the
race to try to be all things to all people, when the Democrats are thrashing
out what their party stands for – and frontrunners Biden and Bernie are the
pillars of the polar positions on the spectrum.
Among the second and third tier candidates, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigeig are perhaps making the
most concerted effort to develop defining ideas. Warren brought up the notion of breaking up
the big tech monoliths, and Buttigeig has been talking up a “court packing” proposal,
that is, adding justices to the Supreme Court to regain a liberal
majority. There is no faint-heartedness
in these views.
Gillibrand is perhaps on the thinnest ice right now. Her failure to launch effectively was already
an issue; she then ran into an epic snafu in her own Senate office’s handling
of a sexual assault charge. Gillibrand was, of course, a central player in the
#MeToo movement, the first to call for Al Franken’s resignation, and the loudest
voice for reform to clean up in the halls of Congress. Essentially, her signature issue, already a
bit of a burden with Franken backlash, blew up on her.
But Beto is the new kid on the block, and his entry, along
with the any-day-now Biden announcement, could shake up a race that has not
moved much since it began to take shape.
WHO CAN BEAT TRUMP?
For some Democrats, there is only one important criterion
in their nominee choice: who has the best chance of beating Trump? The most recent national poll, by Emerson, almost
a month ago, is fascinating, in that Biden, not surprisingly, is the leader at
+10 head-to-head versus Trump – but Bernie is not #2. Sanders, in fact, barely top Trump, by +2, within the margin of error. One can
only conclude that Trump’s strategy to portray the Dems as a bunch of “socialists” is a wise one, and Bernie’s self-description as a “Democratic socialist” is not helping him at all.
Emerson 2/16/2019
|
Dem
|
Trump
|
Margin
|
Biden
|
55
|
45
|
10
|
Warren
|
53
|
47
|
6
|
O'Rourke
|
53
|
47
|
6
|
Booker
|
47
|
42
|
5
|
Harris
|
52
|
48
|
4
|
Sanders
|
51
|
49
|
2
|
Booker
|
51
|
49
|
2
|
Klobuchar
|
51
|
49
|
2
|
And for those of you wondering about Howard Schultz’s possible impact on the race, should he run as an independent, these two charts provide some crude guidance. Schultz pulls more or less equally from Biden
and Trump, perhaps a shade more from Biden – but Schultz destroys Kamala
Harris, turning her +4 head-to-head lead over Trump into a -2 with Schultz in
the race. Schultz’ sources fully 9 of
his 12 points from Harris, and only 3 from Trump. The Dems are wise to fear a Schultz entry.
Emerson 2/16/2019
|
Biden
|
Trump
|
Schultz
|
w/o Schuttz
|
55
|
45
|
n/a
|
w/ Schultz
|
51
|
42
|
7
|
HS Impact
|
-4
|
-3
|
|
Emerson 2/16/2019
|
Harris
|
Trump
|
Schultz
|
w/o Schuttz
|
52
|
48
|
n/a
|
w/ Schultz
|
43
|
45
|
12
|
HS Impact
|
-9
|
-3
|
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