A new Quinnipiac poll found that just four 2020 contenders have a majority favorability among Democratic voters. Predictably, former Vice President Joe Biden leads the pack with 84 percent, and Sen. Bernie Sanders comes in second at 74 percent. The next two contenders at 60 percent are Hillary Clinton (not actually a contender) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (who also may not be a viable contender following her 1/1024 catastrophe).
Suffice it to say, the Democratic Party has a problem.
Consider, only four Democrats have majority favorability within their own party, all of whom are white in a left-wing political climate obsessed with intersectionality. What’s more, all four will be over the age of 70 on Election Day. The next four on the list are Sen. Cory Booker at 46 percent, soon-to-be unemployed congressman and failed Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke at 45 percent, Sen. Kamala Harris at 41 percent, and billionaire Michael Bloomberg at 36 percent.
[Read: 45 Democrats jostling to challenge Trump in 2020]
It goes without saying that everything can change in the 14 months until the Iowa caucuses in February 2020. I wouldn’t bet too much on a single poll, especially over a year before primary voting begins. But combined with every single presidential poll and dozens of Democrats ready to slit each others’ throats to unseat President Trump, its increasingly likely that the 2020 primary season will be a political bloodbath.
California shifted its primary to March and will distribute absentee ballots before the Iowa caucuses, leapfrogging the two historically pivotal and predominantly white primaries that used to shape the direction of primaries. California could skew the Democratic primary season by going hard for Booker or Harris, elevating them to a war against Biden or Bernie. Even worse, the media may go kamikaze on their path to send O’Rourke to the debate stage against Trump, creating a nightmare scenario for Democrats, in which all of the contenders capable of beating Trump kill each other off before the primary season’s end.
Again, polling is a funny thing, and this poll was simply about favorability, not who Democrats would prefer for president. It’s very possible that young progressives who love Bernie as a thought-leader would turn on him in a dime if he jeopardized their chance to get a more “diverse” candidate. And furthermore, the Democratic Party could get their act together and coalesce around a single candidate before they get too deep into the primary process.
But I wouldn’t bet on it.
