The Democratic field for the 2020 presidential election certainly has diversity — with candidates from Texas to California to New York, both men and women, blacks and whites, and even one candidate whose claim to American Indian ancestry has produced an abundance of jokes. But that diversity ends when it comes to political beliefs, as all the candidates are bunched up in left field.
As the calendar flipped to 2019, speculation intensified as to which candidate the Democrats would put on the ticket to challenge President Donald Trump’s reelection bid in 2020. But if you want a Democrat with any conservative leanings at all, you are out of luck with this field.
In a field dominated by present members of Congress, the candidate with the best voting record from the point of view of those of us who favor limited government and constitutional liberty is a man who is not even a Democrat, but rather an Independent — self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Yes, you read that right! According to the Freedom Index of The New American magazine, which rates members of Congress by their voting record’s fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, the potential “Democrat” nominee with the highest score is Sanders, with a mere 28.
Of course, that is not very good, but in a land of blind men, the one-eyed man is king, so to speak. The scores of some of the other contenders are Representative Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), with a 27; Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), at 24; Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), with a 23; Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who scored a 17; Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), making a 16; Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) at 15; and finally, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), with a dismal score of 10.
It is safe to say then, that voters can expect, should any of these capture the Democratic nomination in 2020, that they will have a hard-cord liberal candidate as an alternative to Trump. Even if one throws in former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Vice President Joe Biden, this scenario would remain the same.
Because we can expect progressive orthodoxy from whatever candidate gets the nod, perhaps we should look at other aspects of these hopefuls, and focus more on their chances of representing the Democratic Party in next year’s presidential election.
For what little difference it makes this early in the game, Joe Biden leads in the polls taken of the field thus far. A recent CNN poll had Biden at 30 percent, well ahead of the second-place finisher, Bernie Sanders, with only 14 percent. While sitting vice presidents have historically not done so well, former vice presidents have had good fortune in running for the top spot — names such as Coolidge, Truman, Nixon, Humphrey, Mondale, and Bush can attest to that. While some dismiss Biden’s apparent lead as nothing more than “name recognition,” the reality is that it plays a huge role in determining who ultimately prevails. After all, the names of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were better known than just about any of the other 20 or so candidates who ran last time.
Still, there are reasons that Biden has lost two previous bids for president, starting back in 1988. While his tendency to say stupid things (such as somehow thinking Roosevelt was president in 1929 when the stock market crashed and then went on TV to talk about it, before the era of TVs) may make him a big hit with comedians, it is doubtful that Biden will ultimately prevail to give us a contest between two septuagenarians, who have even talked about who could whip the other in a fist-fight.
Bernie Sanders would be even older than Biden and Trump were he to be sworn in as president in 2021. Although he took Hillary Clinton to the wire in his 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination, one suspects that a large number of his votes came from Democrats who could not stomach Clinton personally. It is doubtful that he can repeat his performance numbers again, in the absence of Hillary from the field.
Beto O’Rourke certainly excited Democrats across the nation when he challenged the high-profile Republican incumbent senator in Texas, Ted Cruz. O’Rourke raised roughly $70 million in his unsuccessful effort, falling about three points short of taking down Cruz, who finished second to Trump in the Republican race last time. But in the end, will Democrats turn to a man who made his name by losing?
Unlike O’Rourke, who is from a red state, California’s Kamala Harris, is from a deep-blue state. A Californian’s presence on the ticket is not needed to carry that state, and the same thing can be said of Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Cory Booker (New Jersey), and New Yorkers Michael Bloomberg and Kirsten Gillibrand. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, both represent states that are some shade of purple. Booker and Harris, both black, would like to generate the same excitement that Barack Obama did in 2008, but that is unlikely. Booker may have hurt his chances with his “I am Spartacus” moment during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.
What is missing from this field of Democrats is a governor. Democrats nominated a state’s chief executive to win the 1976 and 1992 contests, and managerial competence is hard to demonstrate while serving as one member in a Congress of 535 members.
Not mentioned much by the national media right now, but someone I would encourage our readers to watch out for, is Governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado (who leaves office January 8). The Democratic candidates above mentioned generally have voting records that can be exposed in a national campaign, as they have cast thousands of votes as members of Congress.
Hickenlooper appears to be a possible dark horse who will be brought forth by the globalist elites as a supposed centrist alternative to Trump. As I wrote in The New American online (June 7, 2018), Hickenlooper was one of only 131 people invited to attend the super-secretive Bilderberg Group, which held its annual meeting in Turin, Italy. The group was formed in 1954, and some of the biggest movers and shakers in world politics meet to discuss and shape issues of interest to globalist-minded attendees.
That Hickenlooper was one of last year’s 131 elitists in attendance is significant. Bill Clinton, when still a fairly obscure governor of a small state of Arkansas, was in attendance at a Bilderberg meeting in 1991, and the next year he was elected president, defeating another former attendee, George Herbert Walker Bush. In 1964, and again in 1966, Congressman Gerald Ford attended Bilderberg meetings.
So, Hickenlooper is surely someone to watch. This is not to say that he will defeat the above field to challenge Trump.
One thing is sure. The nominee of the Democratic Party in 2020 will be the beneficiary of the overwhelming adoration of the national media, the entertainment industry, and academia, as the wagons will be circled in an all-out effort to take down President Trump.
