Tag Archives: election 2020

a third party candidate in 2024?

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Fox News mentions three possible third party candidates in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election:

Asked if three moderates — Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland — would be considered for the potential ticket, Lieberman said they “are very active members of No Labels” and “would be naturals to consider” as he pointed toward their “strong records of bipartisanship and getting things done for the country and for their constituents.”

Fox News

Third party candidates matter. I tend to think Ross Perot almost certainly hurt George Bush in 1992, an outcome I liked, and made a decisive difference against Al Gore (and Lieberman!) in 2000, an outcome I hated. It would be much better to have a runoff or instant runoff system which would allow us to elect a President who actually gets a majority of the votes, but that is not the system we have for the foreseeable future.

Just a quick reminder that Bernie Sanders took the moral high ground in 2000 and chose not to run as an independent, or “pull a Nader” as one could say. That would have almost certainly have hurt Biden.

What would a “moderate” (by U.S. standards, “well-right-of-center” by international standards) candidate mean in 2024? It’s hard to say. Biden is firmly center-right, and I somewhat doubt a self-described moderate candidate would be much to his right, if at all. But that is the reality. The perception is that the Republican party has successfully tarred him as a “liberal” as they have successfully done to every center-right candidate since Clinton at least. So a “moderate” candidate might take voters away from Biden who self-identify as centrists. The “moderate” candidate would almost certainly take votes away from Trump, especially if they managed to attract the religious conservative vote. So after thinking it through, I think Trump could actually come in third in a contest involving a third-party candidate, and there could be a pretty close contest between Biden and the third party. Which would leave the Republican Party wondering how it got left on the outside of the “establishment” looking in. The Democrats could be even more dismissive of the actual center-left which favors better benefits for working people in line with other industrialized countries. Long live the Pro-Business, Pro-War (which is a business after all) Consensus!

IT’S OVER! CALL IT, YOU PUSSIES!!!

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Update: I wrote the post below (and the headline above) around 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, November 7, 2020. All the major networks called the race around 11:30 a.m.

That was a public service announcement to the news media of the United States of America as I write this on Saturday, November 7, 2020. I did kind of describe the almost exact scenario that happened in my official election prediction post the other day. The only thing is, that was my “unexpected” scenario.

In the “I told you so” category, here is what I said on January 31: “I think the odds favor Biden, a Democratic House, and a Republican Senate.”

It’s over. But Trump voters are going to have a hard time accepting the result. Before I judge too harshly, I think back to 2000 when I had a hard time accepting the result and tried to talk myself into believing the election had been stolen. I didn’t quite succeed – that election in Florida was essentially a tie, and the Bush vs. Gore case was so technical I don’t think anyone without a law degree can come close to understanding it.

You can find election coverage elsewhere, I think I have it out of my system! I’m sure I’ll have some thoughts about policy going forward. I think Biden will basically spend a year trying to deal with coronavirus, followed by three years of trying to restore the Obama center-right, pro-business, pro-war status quo. Republicans politician will convince their followers that these center-right policies are far-left, and the wheel will turn. It will be interesting to see if Biden runs for re-election in four years, and interesting to see who the Republicans put up. Please, for the love of Christ, not Donald J. Trump! But we will see if it is a more mainstream pro-business, pro-war, dog-whistle Republican, or if there is someone out there able to speak to the Trump base but with a bit more finesse and charisma. That’s a scary thought.

my official election prediction

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There’s plenty of election coverage out there, so who needs this post? Well, I’ve been looking for one source of information on when the swing state polls close, what the vote counting situation is, and what the current poll/forecast situation is. I don’t see all of that in one place so here, just for myself, is some info.

I’m a little partial to FiveThirtyEight, just because I’ve been following them for a few elections now. There are other polling and modeling sources out there. I got poll closing times from 270 to win.

Florida

  • Poll closing: 7:00 p.m. ET (for most of the state including all the sizable cities, except that little bit of the panhandle including Pensacola at 8:00 p.m. ET)
  • The counting situation, according to 538: Despite their bad reputation from that election year that shall not be named around the turn of the century, they expect to have most or all results within two hours of closing. They count absentee and mail-in votes in advance, so they just need to combine them with live results and it should result in a more or less complete count. Unless things are really really close, like, you know, that one year…
  • 538 poll average on Friday 10/30 around 4:30 p.m.: Biden +2.2%
  • 538 odds on Friday 10/30 around 4:30 p.m.: Biden 66/34

Georgia

  • Poll closing: 7:00 p.m. ET
  • The counting situation: quick. They’ve counted mail-in ballots in advance. They expect overseas ballots to trickle in, but things would have to be really close for those to matter.

Ohio

  • Poll closing: 7:30 p.m. ET
  • The counting situation: They count absentee ballots in advance, then in-person votes, but they will still count absentee ballots received up to November 13. So if it is close enough that outstanding mail-in ballots could make a difference, news organizations won’t call it on election night.

North Carolina

  • Poll closing: 7:30 p.m. ET
  • The counting situation: About 80% should be counted right away, and more over the next few hours. But then they will still count ballots arriving by November 12, so same story: news organizations won’t call it if it is close.

Texas

  • Poll closing: 8:00 ET (locations in the Central Time Zone, which is almost all of Texas), 9:00 PM (locations in the Mountain Time Zone, which is basically El Paso)
  • The counting situation: Almost everything early on election night. They will still count ballots received by 5 p.m. the day after election day.

Pennsylvania

  • Poll closing: 8:00 p.m. ET
  • The counting situation: Oh, my beloved home state. Pennsyltucky as some call it, but that is completely unfair to the great state of Kentucky which plans to count 90% of ballots on election night. Under state law, we will not start counting mail-in ballots until polls open on election day. The process is supposed to conclude around Friday. Enormous numbers of people have voted by mail, including yours truly. Republicans will tend to vote in person, Democrats by mail. The state is about equally split (basically the Philadelphia metro region and downtown Pittsburgh vs. pretty much everyone else). So it could look like things are trending Republican on election night, but there will be enormous numbers of outstanding ballots expected to skew Democratic. Pennylvania will also count ballots received up to three days after election day, as allowed in not one but two Supreme Court cases over the past few weeks. Bottom line, it seems unlikely this one will be called on election night.

Michigan

  • Poll closing: 9:00 p.m. ET
  • The counting situation: “a few days”. They will start counting mail-in ballots one day early, but are not expecting to finish until around Friday.

Arizona

  • Poll closing: 9:00 p.m. ET
  • The counting situation: “most” on election night

Iowa

  • Poll closing: 10:00 p.m. ET
  • The counting situation: “most” on election night, and they are counting mail-in ballots early

Wisconsin

  • Poll closing: 9:00 p.m. ET
  • The counting situation: “all results by Wednesday morning”

Nevada

  • Poll closing: 10:00 p.m. ET
  • The counting situation: expecting to get most votes from the Vegas area on election night, but counting all votes could take until November 10

Okay, so how might election night unfold. First, I went to 270 to Win’s interactive map. You can pre-populate it with a variety of forecasts from a variety of sources, which is cool. I stuck with 538. Then I turned all the states above into “tossups”. I gave Trump one bonus electoral vote from Maine’s second district, which I don’t know anything about or what to do with.

This starting point is: Biden 227, Trump 126 (remember, you need 270 to win)

Let’s do a scenario where things go unexpectedly well for Trump.

  • Florida closes and is counted quickly. Biden 227, Trump 155
  • Counting also goes well in Georgia. Biden 227, Trump 171
  • Let’s say things go well for Trump in Ohio (where he is a slight favorite), and news organizations are willing to call it: Biden 227, Trump 189
  • North Carolina is counted quickly and goes to Trump: Biden 227, Trump 204
  • Texas goes to Trump quickly and decisively: Biden 227, Trump 242
  • Pennsylvania: no call on election night
  • Michigan: no call on election night
  • Arizona goes to Biden: Biden 238, Trump 242
  • Iowa is counted quickly and goes to Trump: Biden 238, Trump 248
  • Wisconsin is not really close. Even with some outstanding ballots, let’s say news organizations call it for Biden on election night. Biden 248, Trump 248
  • Nevada is not really close, but let’s say there is no call on election night.

We are tied. We go to bed, and every politician in America from President on down starts running their mouth on Wednesday. Lawsuits ensue. But those votes from Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada trickle in during the week, and Biden has substantial leads in all three. It would take an extraordinary amount of luck just for Trump to get close to 50/50 odds.

Here’s a more likely scenario, so let’s consider this my prediction:

  • Florida is called for Biden around 8 p.m. The call is made by the same news organizations that called Florida for Al Gore precisely 20 years ago, but they are much more conservative (in the statistical sense, meaning looking for a higher degree of certainty) these days. Biden 256, Trump 126
  • Georgia goes narrowly for Trump. Biden 256, Trump 142
  • Ohio goes to Trump. Biden 256, Trump 160
  • North Carolina is called for Biden around 9 p.m. Biden 271, Trump 160. IT’S OVER!!!
  • I’m going to stop doing math now. Texas and Iowa go narrowly to Trump, but Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada pile on for Biden late Tuesday night or sometime on Wednesday, and the route is on.
  • It doesn’t matter if Pennsylvania and Michigan take a long time to count their votes, but eventually they do, and the route becomes a landslide. I’ll call 300+ a landslide, although it certainly falls short of the near-sweep (525/538) Ronald Reagan pulled off in 1984. Like the guy or not, that was a clear victory.
  • My final prediction: Biden 334, Trump 204

The Republican Party Doesn’t Stand for Anything!

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I said I was going to look at the Republican Party Platform.

I have voted for Republican candidates at the state and local level at times in the past. I am sympathetic to pro-business, pro-growth arguments at times. I think that some countries have overreached in terms of taxation and regulation at times. I tried to give the Republican Party the benefit of the doubt. BUT…

Today I confirmed that THERE IS NO REPUBLICAN PARTY PLATFORM. They didn’t meet to discuss one, and didn’t adopt one, in 2020. They are for whatever Trump says, and against whatever Obama and the Democratic Party say. They have no ideas, no policy proposals. They simply don’t stand for anything! This is not propaganda. I am not making this up. This is what their website literally says. Just to make sure I wasn’t missing something, I went to the Republican National Committee website, and clicked on the link to the party platform from there. Here’s what is says:

WHEREAS, The RNC has unanimously voted to forego the Convention Committee on Platform, in appreciation of the fact that it did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement…

WHEREAS, The RNC, had the Platform Committee been able to convene in 2020, would have undoubtedly unanimously agreed to reassert the Party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his Administration

WHEREAS, The RNC enthusiastically supports President Trump and continues to reject the policy positions of the Obama-Biden Administration, as well as those espoused by the Democratic National Committee today; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda;

RESOVLVED [sic], That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention

The Republican Party

Okay, fine, let’s look at the 2016 platform then, and compare it to the policy priorities of my pretend party platform.

  • Anti-corruption? No! They are literally against any limits on the purchasing of influence by the rich and powerful. p. 12.
  • A major childcare, education, and training commitment? No! The health and welfare of children is a paramount responsibility of the government…right up to the point where they are born. From that point, childcare is up to parents alone, preferably two heterosexual parents, and the government will not and should not interfere. Parents should have a choice of schools, which sounds reasonable, but in practice this means defunding the universal public education system. Make sure white people are not discriminated against in college admissions. The government should not provide student loans and higher education should be privatized as much as possible.
  • A major public infrastructure and private capital investment commitment? A major research and development commitment? They talk about technology. They talk about startups. I’ll give them some points for talking about the electric grid, which Democrats don’t mention. They don’t really see an active government role in any of these things, let alone an active funding role. They are maybe open to some funding for R&D in the private health care industry.
  • Universal health care? No! Continue to rely on the failed private market place that provides poor outcomes at the world’s highest prices, for those who are able to obtain care at all.
  • A major risk management program? No, but remember I didn’t give the Democrats a high score on this. I’ll give them some points for talking about food security. I’ll give them some points for talking about cybersecurity. They talk a lot about coal. I wonder if they would still talk about coal so much if they adopted a new platform? They state that the IPCC is a political body, not a scientific one. They reject international agreements on carbon emissions. They want to double down in the war on drugs. They are generally for more military spending, more nuclear weapons, and against arms control agreements. Iran, China, and maybe Russia are the enemies. They are just generally against much involvement in international organizations.
  • New revenue to support investment? No, they’re just generally against taxes.
  • Unemployment, disability, retirement? No, they want to monkey with social security.

I tried to be objective and read the document with fresh eyes. I am generally disgusted by it. This is a party with no ideas for improving the country, and I would not entrust them with leadership of anything. I hope they crash and burn in 2020, and reemerge as a more moderate, pro-business and pro-growth party.

ask not what Bernie Sanders could have done for you…

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Warning: political post follows! I’m still thinking about why the continuing Black Lives Matter demonstrations are bothering me a little bit. This Ross Douthat post (the New York Times token conservative op-ed guy) has helped me crystallize it a little bit. Police violence is an important but narrow issue. Renaming streets and tearing down statues is justified in some cases but doesn’t do much to address systemic problems. Maybe the movement will expand to encompass larger issues like violence of all types, mass incarceration, discrimination and inequality afflicting black people. All good, but only a slice of the much larger problems affecting our country and planet.

Many of the people demonstrating in the streets voted overwhelmingly against the candidate who would have done the most on these issues. The article is called “The Second Defeat of Bernie Sanders”. The way I look at it, Bernie Sanders didn’t fail, we all failed to support the candidate who could have brought about real change for all the hard working people of this country, black people included. The “socialism” Bernie stood for was to take just a little of our country’s enormous wealth and use it to provide the benefits that would make ordinary people’s lives better, and that most other wealthy and even functional-but-not-so-wealthy countries in the world are providing. Health care, education, child care, and retirement for a start. If we ever decide to pay reparations for slavery, it is likely to look…something like this. Bernie would have fought to provide these benefits to the descendants of enslaved African people, and to everyone else who needs them. Big business and wealthy individuals would have fought back, tooth and nail. And Bernie would have maybe led a Congress that would have fought back by enshrining meaningful anti-corruption provisions in our nation’s Constitution. He would have led us in doing our nation’s fair share (at least) to address the climate crisis and accelerating ecological collapse. Maybe. Most likely, he would have made real progress on one or two of these issues in our messy real world political system, then tried to lay the ground work for others to continue the fight. But that is more than the next Joe B. Democrat in line is likely to do. Prove me wrong Joe!

the stats on Bernie Sanders’s health risks

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Slate has an interesting article on health risks for someone Bernie Sanders’s age with Bernie Sanders’s known health condition. The author points out that these estimates can be done for Bernie because he has released a fair amount of health information (although still not everything the author would like), while the other older candidates have not.

  • His 12-month risk of a heart attack, stroke, or death is about 6%.
  • His risk of being hospitalized for any reason between now and November is about 30-35%.
  • His odds of surviving a first presidential term are about 65%, and his odds of surviving a second about 40%.

January 2020 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • Open cyberwarfare became a thing in the 2010s. We read the individual headlines but didn’t connect the dots. When you do connect the dots, it’s a little shocking what’s going on.
Most hopeful story:
  • Democratic socialism actually does produce a high quality of life for citizens in many parts of the world. Meanwhile, the hard evidence shows that the United States is slipping behind its peer group in many measures of economic vibrancy and quality of life. The response of our leaders is to tell us we are great again because that is what we want to hear, but not do anything that would help us to actually be great again or even keep up with the middle of the pack. This is in the hopeful category because solutions exist and we can choose to pursue them.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

election 2020!

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I’m going to try not to get too carried away with election 2020 posts. For one thing, a lot of people know a lot more than me about election 2020. Nate Silver for example. In 2012 I made a little spreadsheet electoral college model that helped me understand the election that year. By 2016, that sort of thing was so easy to find on the internet and so much more sophisticated than anything I could hope to come up with that it wasn’t really worth the trouble. For another thing, it can be fun to forecast the outcomes of certain events, sports for instance, and come back later to see how you did. Sports are fun because you pretend to care about them, but you know deep down that they don’t matter. Politics is not like that – they matter and I care, so it is just not that fun to be wrong.

Okay, with that rambling preamble, and before the first voting starts in the Iowa caucus (I’m writing on Sunday, January 26), I’m going to give my predictions. But before I give my predictions, let me be open and honest about what I want to happen. I want Bernie Sanders to be elected President, and I want him to serve alongside a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. This would give the United States a chance to tackle the systemic corruption problem that is dragging our nation down, and put us on a path to future success. Elizabeth Warren would have a chance of doing this too, and I actually prefer her policy positions overall, but I think Bernie Sanders is the stronger leader and the leader we need right now.

I don’t think that is what is going to happen. Of the three (President Bernie Sanders, Democratic House, Democratic Senate), the Democratic Senate is particularly unlikely. Let’s look at PredictIt – gamblers there are giving about a 70/30 chance of the Senate remaining in Republican hands. Those are not awful odds for Democrats, but in a straight-up betting situation you would not take those odds. And keep in mind, a super-majority of 60 in the Senate is required to pass major legislation, not just a majority of 51. So even if Sanders or Warren gets in as President, and assuming the House stays Democratic as seems likely, it will be close to impossible to get major progressive legislation through on issues like campaign finance, health care, childcare or education. A Republican Senate will also block any efforts to reengage with the United Nations or ratify treaties on things such as climate change or human rights. A Democratic President will be stuck trying to fine-tune rules and regulations across the executive branch, rebuild the State Department and shape foreign policy to the extent possible through the executive branch.

Let’s start with general election polls out as of right now. People say these don’t mean anything. But I recall looking at Clinton vs. Trump in these polls, before we knew that either of them would be the nominee in 2016, and being surprised that people thought Trump would beat her. The same polls showed Bernie Sanders beating Trump. So let’s look at these wildly inaccurate, not very useful polls on RealClearPolitics as of Sunday, January 26.

  • Biden vs. Trump: Biden leads by 4.3% nationally, an average of 6 polls taken between December 4 and January 23. Of these 6, 1 shows Trump leading and 1 shows a tie, while the others show Biden leading by 2-9%.
  • Sanders vs. Trump: Sanders leads by 3.2% nationally, an average of 6 polls taken between December 4 and January 23. Of these 6, 1 shows Trump leading , while the others show Sanders leading by 1-8%.
  • Warren vs. Trump: Warren leads by 1.4% nationally, an average of 6 polls taken between December 4 and January 23. Of these 6, 2 show Trump leading and 1 shows a tie, while the others show Warren leading by 5-7%.
  • Incidentally, today PredictIt gives the eventual Republican nominee a 52% chance of beating the eventual Democratic nominee, which doesn’t exactly gel with the numbers above.

The first thing that occurs to me is that these polls (not counting PredictIt) show any of the three most likely Democratic nominees winning the popular vote, whereas they showed Hillary losing it at a similar point in 2016 (based on my memory, I don’t know how to get the historical poll data). Democrats have reasons to be confident, but they are under-confident for obvious reasons. They are probably about as under-confident right now as they were over-confident as of Hillary Clinton’s victory party-like last rally in Philadelphia on election-eve 2016.

The second thing that occurs to me is that the Warren thing is just too close for comfort. I like Warren, but she seems like a risky nominee when Bernie Sanders is so similar in his policy views, and is the stronger potential leader in my view. Similar to Obama, people have this weird reaction to her as an elitist egghead. I personally am comforted when I feel like the people leading the country have a better grasp of subjects like economics and history than I do, but it does not seem as most of my fellow humans share these feelings.

Which leaves us with Sanders and Biden. Let’s go back to Nate Silver and his Monte Carlo models which are so much better than anything I could come up with. His model suggests a 58% chance that no Democratic candidate wins a majority of delegates. Biden has a 42% chance, Sanders a 22% chance, and there is a 15% chance that nobody gets a majority. Nate points out that in the event nobody gets a majority, but somebody gets a clear plurality, one thing that could happen is that the delegates cast votes for their pledged candidate in the first round of voting, but the candidates and delegates arrange in advance for the plurality candidate to get the majority of votes in the second round. I think you have to say that the two most likely outcomes as of today are that Biden gets a majority of delegates on the first vote, or Biden gets a clear plurality of delegates and gets a majority vote on a second ballot as a pre-determined outcome. Put those two together and this is the likely outcome – the Biden vs. Sanders showdown goes to Biden, the Biden vs. Trump showdown goes to Biden, and we have President Biden.

Now let me tell you why my purely subjective, purely anecdotal experience suggests that a President Sanders is a real possibility. It could be that I am rationalizing what I want to happen, of course, which would make me a human being, but nonetheless here it is. I am originally from Martinsville, Virginia, a former Appalachian manufacturing powerhouse that has fallen on very hard times, and this is an understatement. My grandparents’ generation moved from rural subsistence lifestyles to urban factory worker lifestyles. My parents generation worked in those factories when they were young, then got laid off when the factories moved to Mexico and eventually China. I remember friends and relatives railing against Bill Clinton and NAFTA because they thought this took their jobs and the quality of life of their families away. Now, in my personal view, NAFTA was just the final nail in the coffin created by decades of policies meant initially to prop up Cold War allies, which then proved a convenient narrative for multinational corporations, and turned out to be straightforward to represent in abstract mathematical models by academic economists.

Barrack Obama made Martinsville, Virginia one of his early campaign stops, and I know for a fact that some of my hillbilly friends and relatives you would never expect to vote for him bought into his “hopey changey” vision and voted for him in 2008 and 2012. When 8 years of Obama didn’t noticeably improve their lives, and the Democrat running in 2016 had the last name “Clinton”, these same friends and relatives voted for Trump in 2016. I think people who self-identify as America’s lost industrial base in Pennsylvania (where I now live), Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin did the same. To state the obvious, 2020 is not 2016, there is no candidate named Clinton, and Bernie Sanders won the 2016 primaries in some of these states. At least some of these “working class” Trump voters are going to love Bernie Sanders. Combine this with the coin toss in Florida which went Trump’s way in 2016, an outside chance of Texas flipping Democratic in 2020, and uncertainty about the economy, and Bernie has a good chance. Like I said, Democrats are under-confident.

So let’s be clear: I think the odds favor Biden, a Democratic House, and a Republican Senate. I think Sanders, a Democratic House, and a Republican Senate is the second most likely outcome. Trump, a Democratic House, and a Republic Senate is probably the third most likely outcome. Nobody knows what is going to happen with the economy or geopolitical events, but in the next 11 months something is probably going to happen. Sanders, a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate is not a high probability, but as Nate Silver might point out, a sports metaphor might help us realize that the odds are not that different from perhaps an underdog like the Philadelphia Eagles winning the 2018 Superbowl (which they did). It’s likely enough to be worth fighting for.

my campaign platform

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I always fantasize in election years about what my campaign platform would be, in a fantasy world where I had political skills and was running. It’s not a useless fantasy, because it gives me a benchmark to measure candidates against when I’m thinking of who to vote for. So here goes:

  • Education – “free college” and trade school yes, but also universal preschool, lifelong education, and strong incentives for private sector skills training and retraining.
  • Infrastructure – I’ve talked a lot about this. Plan at the metropolitan area scale, take a broad view of infrastructure to include housing and green infrastructure. Include strong incentives for private sector capital investment.
  • Innovation – Flood universities with funding for basic research across the board. Make some bets on a few “moon shot” technologies like quantum computing, nanotechnology, fusion power, and advanced biotechnology. Include strong incentives for private sector R&D.
  • Corruption – also known as “campaign finance”, but that sounds boring. This is really about having voters rather than dollars decide elections, and having elected officials write laws that benefit a critical mass of citizens rather than a few large campaign donors. It’s really a prerequisite to achieving anything else in the long term. Hammer the fuckers relentlessly and voters might respond.
  • Nuclear Weapons – Sure I want world peace, but the public is incredibly cynical about that and this is a place to start. Remind people how horrifying and dangerous they are, and that we have way more than we could ever rationally need for any purpose. If we want others to give them up or stop pursuing them, we can easily lead by example. Just put them away as they wear out and don’t make new ones.

Maybe I’ll elaborate on these in future posts, if I get a chance.

Now, which politician do I think is the best match? I have a lot of research and paying attention to do. I think Bernie Sanders would be the strongest on campaign finance, and just making progress on that issue in an 8-year administration might be worth putting him in office. I also think he might be strong on peace. I think his instinct is to expand the welfare state without taking the first three steps to accelerate income growth over time. I’m not sure who I think would be strongest here. Possibly a rational, moderate Republican actually, if such an animal still exists. But I will never support any politician from that party as long as it continues to stand for bigotry, science denial, and war.

democrats likely to run for President in 2020

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Five Thirty Eight has a list of who they think is currently serious about a run for President in 2020. It’s a long list. I’ve added their ages in parentheses.

  • Lawyer Michael Avenatti (47)
  • South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (36)
  • Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (52)
  • former Vice President Joe Biden (75)
  • New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (49)
  • former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro (44)
  • Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (66)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (47)
  • New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (51)
  • California Sen. Kamala Harris (53)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder (67)
  • former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (58)
  • Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon (61)
  • former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (55)
  • Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts (39)
  • Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio (45)
  • Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (77)
  • Rep. Eric Swalwell of California (37)
  • businessman and pro-impeachment activist Tom Steyer (61)
  • Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (69)

To break it down a little:

  • 20 candidates
  • by age: 3 in their 30s, 5 in their 40s, 5 in their 50s, 5 in their 60s, 2 in their 70s
  • by gender: 3 women, 17 men
  • by ethnicity: 4 black or Hispanic people, 16 white people (from a very quick scan, and I could easily have missed someone)

I can really only say I am familiar with five of these names: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Eric Holder, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker. At least there is some variety in the list. Maybe the DNC learned a lesson last time – not to put their thumb on the scale and try to force a particular candidate, rather than just letting the primary process play out.

Trump still has a number of challenges between now and when he faces one of these people in two years: criminal prosecution of close associates and possibly even family members or himself, possible impeachment by a majority Democratic House of Representatives, and possible challengers in the Republican Primary. It seems like a lot, but you have to admit Trump is a man who has tended to get his away against the odds and I have learned not to underestimate him.