If there’s one thing Democratic voters very clearly want in 2020, it’s to beat President Trump. What they don’t want is an even larger field of candidates to choose from to achieve that goal. Seven out of 10 Democratic voters are “satisfied with their choices” for presidential nominee, and while half say they’d jump aboard the Michelle Obama train immediately if she were to declare, other possible late entrants poll significantly less well.
Nonetheless, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick both took steps this week toward entering the crowded field. Bloomberg’s initial constituency is small, with Fox News polling only estimating 6% of Democratic primary voters would “definitely” flock to Bloomberg. However, even if his base is small, he at least has the massive resources necessary to gain ballot access this late in the game. Patrick, meanwhile, has little time, money, or manpower to get himself onto the ballot at all.
But the whole episode seems to highlight a fascinating gap between the party elites who spend time talking to reporters (and potential candidates) about their anxieties around the field, and the Democratic voters who are still waiting for the field to slim down a bit before they really settle in and make up their minds.
The problem starts with the perception of the lackluster candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden. Though he tends to poll best against Trump in general election matchups and has remained ahead in the national polls consistently all year, he is caught in a challenging four-way fight for Iowa. While Iowa is not predictive of Republican presidential nomination outcomes (just ask Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz), Iowa has picked the winner of the Democratic contest consistently over the last few elections. With New Hampshire as “home turf” for his two major rivals, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, there is worry that if Biden loses the first two contests, he might not be saved by South Carolina, where he currently polls quite well due to his strength with African American Democrats and more conservative Democrats.
There’s the mediocre fundraising totals, putting him millions of dollars behind Sanders, Warren, and even South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the third-quarter fundraising totals. There were the lackluster debate performances early on, as well as a continuation of a patented brand of public speaking gaffes. Even though his polls have held steady, the panic continues.
Democrats so badly want to beat Trump and consistently say that defeating him is their No. 1 issue in the primary, yet the debate over electability has problems for all the major Democratic candidates. Some worry Warren is too far left and her healthcare plan will alienate swing voters, a worry that is backed up by data. Surprisingly few commentators seem to take seriously the notion that Sanders could win the nomination, but his embrace of the socialist label will clearly pose challenges in a general election.
But when it comes to Biden, even though no polls at this point show him struggling against Trump, there’s a sense that perhaps it’s just not his time, a worry that he hasn’t put up a better fight against the far-left candidates in the field and a wonder if that will translate to an inability to fight the Trump machine. The online Left has never been particularly enamored of Biden, and, to the extent political reporters draw conclusions about the Democratic electorate from this wildly unrepresentative community, it can even further feed a “narrative” that Biden is struggling. The liberals of his party never thought he was that great, and the centrists worry he’s not doing well enough.
Enter Bloombergmania. The irony, of course, is that to the extent Bloomberg hones in on a more fiscally moderate slice of the party and draws that away from Biden, his candidacy could actually make it easier for Warren or Sanders to pull off a win. The Bloomberg play only helps the party’s worried elite class if he replaces Biden, and the idea that Biden, a top-three candidate with relatively consistent polling strength, is going to suddenly exit stage right seems far-fetched. There’s also the fact that Bloomberg’s “socially progressive, fiscally moderate” worldview is not as widely held among the general public as it seems to be among political elites, making his appeal seem much stronger to those elites than it might be in practice.
Democratic elites have every reason to be unsettled about 2020. Even though general election polls show Trump consistently only winning 40% of voters nationwide, the race is closer in key swing states, and the Democratic candidates have not yet experienced an assault by Brad Parscale’s billion-dollar Trump machine.
But at this stage of the game, the remedy isn’t a larger field. And the remedy is almost certainly not candidate Bloomberg.
