https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/13/the-2020-
As much as we’d all like to take a moment and enjoy the end of the 2018 midterms, the reality is that November 7 was not the last day of election season; it was the first day of the 2020 presidential campaign. Politics is an never-ending game.
And you’d better believe the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries are going to be a circus. The field of candidates who will run is shaping up to be nearly as large as that of the Republicans in 2016, which was the largest number of candidates in a presidential primary in American history. It’s not too early to begin thinking about who those candidates will be.
Indeed one candidate, who may be considered “serious,” already has officially declared his intention to run: U.S. Representative John Delaney of Maryland. Delaney is likely to go the way of Martin O’Malley in 2020 (notwithstanding the fact that Martin O’Malley himself may reappear in 2020 to run), and inevitably he will be joined by other “also-rans” with no viable shot.
Still, expect no shortage of major candidates fighting for the lead in each of the major ideological lanes of the Democratic field.
In the post-2016 world, it makes the most sense to view any future presidential primary through a lens of “insiders” versus “outsiders,” with perhaps a few other candidates somewhere in the middle of this spectrum between the establishment and the populists. First, there is the high-profile battle for the blessing of the party elites.
A Veep Sweep?
As numerous nationwide and statewide polls have already shown, the apparent frontrunner is former Vice President Joe Biden. Having previously run in 1988 and 2008, a third run in 2020 would be the latest in a long American tradition of vice presidents taking up the mantle of their party after the president they served under has been termed out of office.
Biden is hardly a sure-thing, however. His age (he’s three years older than President Trump) and his reputation for remarkably stupid gaffes may prove to be serious barriers. And, in the era of #MeToo, don’t be surprised if his creepy, touchy-feely approach with women becomes a campaign issue.