One day it may be said of the Democrats’ run in the 2020 election that their campaign peaked too soon. Much, much too soon.
Already they have assumed that the White House will be theirs, and they set out boasting of a new class of leaders that was different and better than any imagined before, so novel and different, so gay and so female. And never had it seemed to splinter so quickly, beset by problems it hadn’t imagined and complications it hadn’t foreseen.
As it turned out, its most dynamic and charismatic emerging young leaders were far to the Left of the voters the party has to appeal to. These young Turks favor socialism, which voters distrust; government healthcare, which voters fear; and oppose free enterprise, which voters favor. A number of these new figures are anti-Semitic.
Meanwhile, the large and still-growing collection of 2020 Democratic contenders resemble the Republican field of 2016, in which too many candidates appealed to too many people who were too much like one another. This ultimately prevented the candidates from consolidating voter support until they had all torn one another to bits.
Among the candidates, there were matched sets of people running against one another who had much the same things to say: Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., running as populists; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, running on platforms of “charm without substance;” Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif., auditioning for the role of “First Woman President.”
The latter seem capable of projecting femininity without losing authority, something Hillary Clinton never managed to pull off. But working against them are their home states of California and New York. New York is the state in which the governor just signed a bill permitting abortion until the moment of birth and then lit up a building to celebrate. California is the state that gave Hillary Clinton her entire popular vote majority in the 2016 election.
California elected its last Republican senator in 1982, and New York in 1992. Since then, New York and California have been one-party states, growing bluer and bluer by the day and the minute, giving rise to the theory that anyone can win in California by being a Democrat. But for a California Democrat to win outside of California is a whole other story. The blue state agenda may not sell well in other parts of the country, and it’s best to have someone who can talk to the natives.
With Trump in the picture, no one knows what can happen. And remember, you never can tell.
