Today is the first day of November 2018 and we are in the home stretch of the mid-term election. At my age it is the most important mid-term of my life. However, today I’m going to take a look just around the political corner at the 2020 election. Let’s explore.
I have a history of being an early endorser for president and 2020 will most likely not be an exception. However, at this point I have a bunch of people I like albeit some more than others but what I want to talk about today is my biggest fear. It will come as no surprise that I will be endorsing a Democrat; the Republicans simply lack anyone a progressive can support. (Hint: at this point I’m not certain Donald Trump will be the 2020 GOP nominee. Expect me to write more about that in the not that distant future.)
I watched the 2016 Republican clown car that started out with 17 declared candidates. The sheer number meant that a lot of legitimate GOP hopefuls cannibalized each other leaving the door open for a wild card like Trump. People like Jeb Bush and John Kasich who were the best Republican candidates got lost in the shuffle to a great degree. I certainly would have voted for Hillary Clinton over either of them but by the same token I’d rather have either of them in the White House than Donald Trump! While I often disagreed with both of them on policy at least they were qualified, knowledgeable and were not involved in an organized criminal enterprise.
Along that line I worry about too large of a Democratic field in 2020. If that happens – and I firmly believe it will – some will get lost in the shuffle because too many are to a great degree equally deserving of support. This opens the door to someone who is a bit outlandish capturing a slightly larger share of the early support and forcing good candidate(s) to drop out. Money – which is already too large of a factor in American politics – will also play too large of a roll. Someone with a fat checkbook can weather an early storm(s). A candidate who lacks deep pocketed financiers will be forced to drop out early if they don’t “get out of the gate fast”.
I plan on a series of articles on the prospective Democratic candidates probably starting in mid-December. That coordinates with my practice of writing well ahead of publishing so that I can take the last half of December off from writing. This time around I fear I will be predicting after people have announced their candidacy. I would not be shocked to see candidacies announced as early as November 7th. For months I have been compiling a list of possibilities to include in the series. As of this writing it stands at 31on the Democratic side. That is the cause of my fear.
My bottom line for 2020 is that the progressive side cannot afford to lose the presidential election and the only palatable candidate who can win that we can support will be the Democratic nominee. I want someone who both can win in November 2020 and will do a good job in office. We don’t need a Democratic Trump just minus the felonies.
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