How the Democrats are Going to Lose in 2020

I've written before about the advantages President Trump has going into the 2020 election. Now I'll talk about what the Democrats are doing wrong.

First a note on strategy. There are three things a campaign can do. It can try to turn out the base, depress the other side's base, and convince swing voters to vote for their candidate. Most campaigns use two of these and some use all three. Hillary Clinton entered the race so well-known that it was difficult for her to appeal to swing voters so she concentrated on appealing to the Obama coalition and to trying to depress the rump vote. In fact, 90% of her ads were meant to depress Trump voters. They were direct attacks on Trump without bothering to offer herself as an alternative. Trump's campaign went after swing voters including many blue-collar workers who had been considered safely Democrat. Obviously Trump's strategy worked and Clinton's didn't. She got fewer votes than Obama and only did well in states that were safely blue.

So, onto 2020.

Right off the bat, the Democrats have a problem. In fact they have a dozen problems and growing. There are too many candidates. There are 18 or 19 with more expected including Joe Biden. That will get winnowed down pretty fast when the primaries start but it's going to cause enormous problems in the meantime. A related problem is that the candidates are all so similar. The party has a list of litmus tests that each candidate must pass to even be considered. With so many candidates running on nearly the same platform it's difficult for any one of them to stand out. There are multiple women and multiple blacks. There's only one openly gay candidate so far and he's managed to push into the upper tier, probably because of support from gays, but he's the major of a medium-sized city. That's not much to run on.

It takes a lot of money to run a presidential campaign. I order to have any chance of getting the nomination you have to have campaign headquarters in multiple states, preferably all of them plus a few territories. Clinton didn't do that in 2008 and it cost her the nomination. But there's only so much money to go around and with so many candidates, each running on nearly the same platform, it will be difficult for any of them to set up a national primary challenge. On the right side, this will make it easier for one or two to break free of the pack early on. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the two most likely to break free of the pack are Biden and Saunders. Both have significant name recognition and they consistently lead in the polls. I say unfortunate because they are both too old for the job. Trump set a record for the oldest candidate but these two are just shy of 80 and look it. Biden already floated the idea of running for a single term with a black female running mate who would take over from him in 2024 (She turned it down and is considering her own run).

Biden and Sanders have other problems. Biden is unexciting and has a problematic history. He was always a solid Democrat but the party has moved so far to the left that mainstream Deocratic positions he supported in the 1990s are now anathema to a candidate. He may be able to attract swing voters back but the base will not turn out for him. Sanders has the opposite problem. He's not even a Democrat, he's a Democratic-Socialist. He excites the base but union workers with good healthcare aren't going to swing back to vote for him.

The rest of the field has to contend with a party that is very different than it seems on social media. According to the New York Times, the Democrats engaged in social media are far whiter and further left than the majority of the party. The entire slate except for Biden is playing for the social media crowd. That will fire up the base but won't attract swing voters. There is little they can do to depress the Trump vote, either. Clinton already played that card.

So the party is caught between three choices. Biden is a safe choice but, between his age, his past positions and being an old, white man who's been around forever, he's not going to fire up the base. Saunders is old and radical and Trump would probably come out way ahead in debates. No one else has the stature to defeat a sitting president. They might excite the base but they are all too radical to attract swing voters.

Elizabeth Warren deserves special mention. Had she run in 2016 then she'd be in the top tier instead of Saunders. She was widely quoted and respected 8 years ago but she chose not to run in 2016. She probably calculated that Clinton was unstoppable and has a reputation of being unforgiving. The prospect of being senator under a hostile President Hillary was too daunting. When she decided not to run, her supporters moved over to Saunders and enthusiasm for Warren cooled. Then she released her DNA results and tried being relatable by live-streaming getting a beer. All of this pushed her from a contender to the middle of the pack.

Finally, on top of everything else, Trump is on the right side of the issues. A solid majority thinks that illegal immigration is a problem and a super majority is against open borders. Most people are satisfied with their insurance (which is why Obamacare only affected people who did not have insurance through their employer) and most people are skeptical of the Green New Deal. The issues that excite the Democratic base turn off the general electorate and are not even overwhelmingly popular among the greater Democratic Party.

So, baring an economic collapse or a miraculous U-turn on issues by the Democrats, Trump is likely to be reelected.