I don’t have a firm favorite for the 2020 Democratic nomination. I know who I don’t want to get it. That would be Kristin Gillibrand, Tulsi Gabbard, and Amy Klochubar. I also don’t want Sherrod Brown, but for a different reason than the other three. We can’t afford to lose that Ohio Senate seat.
Putting all that aside, my main concern is that Trump’s numbers being where they are, and the high probability that the rest of his family as well as a number of his other hanger ons will be indicted or in jail by 2020, that we may be getting too confident about the ultimate outcome of the race. I agree with digby:
Personally, I think that most people want to beat Trump more than anything. But at this stage, they’re thinking of the things that affect their lives and want to be sure that Democrats nominate someone who reflects those values and commitments. Primaries are the mechanism by which we sort all that out in a big, diverse coalition.
But it’s also possible that more than a few people think there’s no way Trump can possibly be re-elected and that’s just not true. I really hope that people who know better make that clear. Trump’s base is mesmerized by him. And there’s a reason for that:
That base is amazingly solid and all it’s going to take is for him to siphon off a few percentage points and sneak in again.
I can’t help but hark back to 2016. On this date three long years ago I wrote the following in my journal:
I have begun to think, however, that the odds of Trump’s winning are swinging in his favor. We may be electing our Hitler. He’ll be running against Hillary, which he can do from both the right and the left. It’s truly rather scary. She is unbelievably uninspiring. In addition, I read today that one of her former aides has been given immunity to testify about the email server issue. That’s scary because it’s something he can harp on, and the press will run with. I think it’s a nothingburger and I’m really surprised that the Justice Department is even looking into it, never mind feeling the need to grant anyone immunity. But it may be all we hear about in the summer, after the press comes around and decides that after all, Donald, by virtue of having gotten the nomination, is now respectable and responsible, being that he’s a Republican.
Maybe she’s got her shit together to take him down, but I doubt it. She’s bought into beltway wisdom before, and she may still believe that he’ll crash and burn on his own. All it will take to make him the new Fuehrer is for the economy to tank, which it very well may, a result, ironically, of Obama’s refusal to rein in the banks.
I wasn’t entirely right. He didn’t need an economic downturn. He beat her for the other reasons I mentioned. But the fact is that by the time November rolled around, I had bought into the conventional wisdom and was absolutely certain she’d win. We can’t afford to do that this time around. Nor can we afford a third party milquetoast candidate to drain off the small percentage of “centrists”. Howard Schultz may become the man responsible for ending democracy in this country and insuring that the climate crisis goes unaddressed.
Timing may be all in 2020. Some sort of economic downturn is inevitable. The nation and the world would be well served if it happened soon enough to have maximum impact on the 2020 election. The last time around (2008) it happened too late to have that much impact on the election itself, though Obama still won, but it left him to take the political heat for a situation caused by his immediate predecessor. FDR, by contrast, got in when the impact had already been felt, so everyone knew where to place the blame. It is remarkable that Trump is so unpopular given the superficial health of the economy, but that could easily change. The Republicans are good at staying on message; the Democrats are terrible. The media is reflexively both siderist, so we can look forward to them glomming on to some minor imperfection in our candidate and equating it with Trump’s criminality. After all they did that last time.
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