We are a little over 2 weeks from the US midterm elections and about the same over 2 years away from the next presidential election. Most cycles, that would mean the candidates would start posturing about 6 months from now. But this isn’t most cycles.

It’s not exaggerating to say the 2020 race started the day Trump took office. There are three groups who’ll be making their opening their bids over coming weeks, if they haven’t already. These are:

• The Democrats
• Anti-Trump Republicans
• Trump himself

There will be all sorts of names touted for the first two groups, some of which may be more serious than others. However, there are also some key runners who it’ll be worth watching. If I get time, I’ll do a run-through of all these groups. For now, I just want to have a look at the Democrat A-listers.

Probably the biggest names here are Bernie ‘Make Them Pay’ Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden. A likely addition to this list is Michael Bloomberg, thankfully the only ex-Mayor of New York in the running this time around.

Conspicuous by her absence, I don’t think Michelle Obama will run in 2020. If we’re talking 2024, I think that will be a very different story. I’m also ignoring what I’ll disparigingly refere to as ‘novelty’ candidates, like Avenatti. Stormy Daniels’ lawyer will be in it for the limelight and subsequent book deal, but I don’t think there’s a chance in hell of him making a serious bid for it.

Bernie ‘Professor Farnsworth’ Sanders

Obviously he’ll run. He was a furious geriatric before Trump won an election. By now he must be so pissed off, there’s a good chance he’ll turn up to the primary debates in a 300ft mechanised dinosaur suit that breathes carbon-neutral fire.

He’s going to have a good run and I’d be surprised if he didn’t make it to the final two. That said, I think he did as well as he could on the last run and won’t make it all the way to the candidacy itself.

There’s a line of reasoning that he’ll be able to rally disenfranchised anti-establishment voters who went for Trump last time. I think that’s ignoring how vast a distance there is between them on basically every other issue. Yes, the anti-establishment drive is currently a powerful motivating factors in politics. But “I’ll vote for an admitted sex-pest and probable psychopath” strong? Then swing towards a guy who disagrees with him on literally everything? I don’t think so.

Like Warren, Sanders is up for re-election in this year’s midterms. However, unlike her he won his last election with a 47% lead. He could afford to lose a full 20% at the ballot box and still have a straight majority for Vermont.

Elizabeth Warren

Until today, I thought Warren was a contender for strongest candidate. Without wanting to get too reductionist about this, I’m going to. She has:

• Academic accomplishments
• Some cross-party economic credentials
• A vagina

This means she has strong appeal to people who like Obama, swing-voters and anti-Trump independents, and Hilary supporters. Much of the US (the bits that don’t vote Trump) is ready for a female president, which will bring pressures to bear that shouldn’t be underestimated. She’s articulate and passionate.

But… she’s fucked it. She has engaged Trump on his own terms. She’s now engaged with an argument over facts with a man who has no regard for facts. He will lie, he will belittle, he will launch all sorts of challenges and attacks. And because she’s started to respond, she has two options: respond in kind or lose.

There’s an adage that I believe to be entirely true: never argue with an idiot, because they’ll drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. Warren has started the argument. The publicity will now show her either losing (bad) or turning into Trump (worse). The former mobilises his base, the latter keeps her own at home in disgust.

With a majority of less than 10%, polls are likely to get her scrambling to hold her seat in the upcoming midterms. If she doesn’t win that with a resounding (ideally larger) majority, her shot at the White House is probably done for.

Joe Biden

Please. Please, Joe. Not only would I love to see Biden as president, I’d be a very happy man just watching him run a campaign. He has very little time for idiots. He considers his (potential) presidential opponent to be the Sultan of Fuckwits. He’s witty, erudite, and generally extremely likeable.

More importantly though, he’s got plenty of other, less subjective things going for him. He isn’t rich, living a notably modest life and having no investment interests of any kind. That keeps him away from Wall Street. He’s Catholic, which is specific enough to impress the (worryingly large) fraction of the electorate that care about leaders with ‘real’ religious affiliation. His record with the blue-collar vote is pretty good, which gives him some traction against a perceived Trump stronghold vote across key states.

The negatives? It’s all-too possible that he’ll say something that can be spun into a disaster. His relationship with Obama is a double-edged sword, likely to please many but also enrage others. He hasn’t won a ‘normal’ Senate election since 2008, which while he took with a nearly 20% margin was still a long time ago. I also think there’s a chance he might just… not run. He should. And he’s been making some of the right noise. But I just get this feeling he might wave it away.

Michael Bloomberg

He’s rich. Really, really rich. He has the kind of money that makes Trump writhe with insecurity – over $50,000,000,000 and counting. In the political environment of the United States, that gives him a lot of literal buying power that make him a realistic prospect.

He’s (sort of) a political outsider, but the kind that has experience: he’s never been in the Senate or House, but as 3-term mayor of New York will be seen to have earned his wings. During this time, he was a registered Republican and then Independent. Now looking to make a name for himself bringing the Democrats ‘back to the centre’* he should have strong swing-vote appeal.

On possibly the most interesting note, he has perhaps unparalleled capacity to troll Trump into full self-destruct mode. He ran the city Trump only ever boasted about influencing. He is the kind of rich that Trump wishes he could prove himself to be. He has won actual majorities in elections. He even shares the coughcoughcough honour of being endorsed by Rudi Giuliani.

In the very least, he has the potential of being a really interesting candidate. I think a big drawback for him will be that he’s very establishment, which means there’s likely to be a bruising primary run between him and Bernie “88 miles per hour” Sanders. The Democrats have a tendancy to end up buggering their presidential election odds due to a combination of brutal primaries and fudged messaging. That could be a danger for Bloomberg. But, on the other hand, fifty billion dollars. So let’s call it a toss-up and see how it goes.

Summary

I’ve missed loads. There will quite possibly be as many as a dozen Democrats running for the candidacy. In some cases, the outcome of the midterms will be the deciding factor of how far their bids go. For others, it might be how they respond to Trump’s playbook. I think the above are the most serious contenders from one of the three sides of the fence.

Who’ll win? At this point, I don’t give a shit. I’d be happy to see a slice of reformed ham elected if it meant Trump was out of office. But in the next couple of weeks we will see who sees themselves as contenders and (perhaps more importantly) who Trump sees as a threat.

 

*Only in the US could they be considered to have ever left it. Unless you take the reasonable view that they never reached it, due to still sitting significantly to the right of the centre throughout their entire political history.