There is no clearer indication that Democrats are in a state of crisis heading into 2020 than the sudden anticipation for former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to jump in the race.
A CNN report on Monday said several wealthy donors were declining to commit their support for any Democrat until they know for sure that McAuliffe won’t run. If he does, they’re pledging to put their money behind him.
McAuliffe has no national reputation, but in Washington, he’s most closely associated with his extensive history fundraising for Bill and Hillary Clinton.
So, then: This is who some of the most active, deep-pocketed donors in the Democratic Party are waiting for? A Clinton understudy?
The party has no leader, no direction, and it’s increasingly obvious that the different factions are clashing in irreconcilable ways. The Clinton people are still mad at Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for daring to challenge Hillary for the nomination. Even as he makes his second run as a Democrat, he’s simultaneously distancing himself from the party by running for re-election to his Senate seat as an independent.
Democrats who have already declared their candidacies are also anxiously awaiting decisions by former Vice President Joe Biden, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who has said he would run an independent campaign. Their interest in Schultz, of course, is that they know his run would hurt them more than it would hurt President Trump.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is busy trying to squeeze her whole body through the eye of a needle by campaigning for the nomination while at the same time inching away from the base’s newly mainstream positions: Medicare for all, free college tuition, and uncompromising devotion to halting climate change.
Several other candidates have wedded themselves to the embarrassing “Green New Deal,” including Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey. Now that the proposal championed by the spirited but ignorant Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has an impossible price tag approaching $100 trillion, they’re finding that defending the plan is as taxing as it would be to fund it.
And poor Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. She might think she’s finally put to rest her exhausting American Indian saga, but she hasn’t. It will resurface at the first Democratic primary debate, reawakening the party’s ugliest force: the social justice movement and its followers, who will demand every candidate lay themselves at its alter of personal grievance.
People in the media like to say that the 2016 general campaign was “bitter” and “divisive.” The Democratic primary for 2020 is going to make that election look like child’s play.
