Democrats have an advantage in the 2020 presidential race. They can select their nominee for president from a pack of candidates. Republicans are limited to one: President Trump.
Still, Democrats have to choose wisely. If they nominate one of the left-wing candidates, their chances of winning the presidency will diminish. But if they nominate a candidate more toward the center, their prospects of defeating Trump will improve. Presidential politics is just that simple.
The early front-runner, Joe Biden, fits the nonleftist model. He’s hardly a moderate, but he’s closer to being one than most of the Democratic candidates. He has his differences with the party’s Left, most recently waffling on the Hyde Amendment, which bars taxpayer funding of abortions in most cases. He finally caved to pressure to oppose it on Thursday.
Nor has he apologized for supporting the 1994 crime bill, which he championed as a senator. In fact, he’s rejected the notion that the crime legislation is responsible for the alleged “mass incarceration” of minorities in federal prisons. And he favors repairing Obamacare rather than imposing “Medicare for all” on the country.
Biden is running a front-runner’s campaign. He doesn’t show up everywhere the lesser candidates do. He skipped the California Democratic party’s convention in San Francisco, a hotbed of left-wing activists. Since he doesn’t lack name identification, he didn’t need their attention.
If he addressed the convention, he knew he’d get booed. And the media would make his embarrassment the lead story. When former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney spoke, they were booed, Hickenlooper for criticizing socialism, Delaney for opposing “Medicare for all.” They were Biden proxies.
Biden has one important feature other candidates lack: He’s seen as a potential Trump beater. There are other nonlefties who might emerge if he fades, as he did in his two earlier presidential campaigns. Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock are not running as copycats of Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. But Biden appears to be the biggest threat to Trump in the general election.
Albert Hunt, who’s covered presidential races for decades, writes that “it’s starting to look more like a gang of five with a solid leader, a well-known challenger, and three contenders coming up on the outside.” But only Biden looks formidable. The other four are in his shadow at the moment.
Sanders is weaker than in 2016 when he nearly overtook Hillary Clinton for the nomination. His chance for the presidency seems to have come and gone. He is 77 and looks it. Trump would love to run against the Sanders brand of socialism, and for good reason.
Warren has not recovered from the exposure of her claim to be a Native American as false. She’s unresponsive to questions. On the other hand, she defends a vast array of new government programs and higher taxes quite well. It likely won’t elevate her campaign high enough, though, even in the Democratic Party.
Sen. Kamala Harris of California has a hard act to follow in Iowa next February: former President Barack Obama. He won the caucuses in 2008, showed African American voters he was a serious candidate, and they rallied to his campaign. She can’t match Obama, but a strong Iowa finish would lure black voters away from Biden and promote a landslide in the California primary in March. It’s too bad for Harris this is merely a pipe dream of her mistake-prone campaign.
Pete Buttigieg is a smart, young candidate of 37 years with an impressive resume for a mayor of a mid-sized city, South Bend, Ind. And he’s an attractive candidate on TV. His problem is his embrace of the leftist agenda. Can he escape its drag on his campaign? We’ll find out in the first Democratic debate this month.
These four candidates lack something of great political value that Biden seems to have. Remember all those soft Republicans, moderates, and independents who voted for Democrats in the midterm election in November? They had come to loath Trump, his temperament more than his policies.
The natural rhythm of politics is for most of them to drift back to their original voting pattern in the next election. And a left-wing Democrat who’s for reparations and the Green New Deal won’t prevent this from happening. Only Biden could have the opposite effect, keeping the GOP renegades on board.
Democrats insist that ousting Trump from the White House is their top priority. We’ll see if they really mean it. If they do, Biden will be the beneficiary.
Fred Barnes, a Washington Examiner senior columnist, was a founder and executive editor of the Weekly Standard.
