DEMocracy 2020: February 2019 Edition (It's Getting a Bit Crowded in Here)

This is the second installment of a monthly blog series that follows the candidacies and headlines of the 2020 Presidential Election. If you wish to view the first article, you can click here!

Welcome to the February 2019 edition of DEMocracy 2020! I decided to stick with this name because of the emphasis on the Democrats this time around. The candidate count is almost in the double digits! For this month, I will go over the candidates who declared in February and then some headlines that took place this month.

2020 Declared Presidential Candidates: Democratic

1) Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)



To the surprise of literally nobody, Cory Booker has entered the 2020 Presidential race as a Democrat. The timing of his announcement correlated with the beginning of Black History Month. In hindsight, this was a great day to launch the campaign. Unfortunately, his campaign launch coverage got cut short when in the mid-afternoon hours, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's yearbook controversy began to dominate the national news coverage for days, overshadowing this strategic launch. Regarding the candidate, I don't believe he really has much of a shot in the primary. Yes, he's drawn similarities to Former President Barack Obama, but this field is too crowded and I believe all his candidacy will do is take votes away from whomever the "establishment" frontrunner will be. Will it be Kamala Harris? Will it be Joe Biden? Will it be Beto O'Rourke? We don't know. But I DO know that Cory Booker will likely never reach that status and will take votes away from any of those three (barring a surprising twist in our story). He's also a super corporate candidate who is running a campaign very similar to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. That won't work this time around. Democrats want and need a candidate who will energize moderates AND farther-left voters, and Booker's history of being a "corporate Democrat" will make that next to impossible.

2) Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)



But Jacob, didn't you talk about Warren last month? Yes, I did, but I only talked about her exploratory committee. On February 9th, she made things official and became a candidate for President of the United States. I don't really have that much to say outside of what I said last month, so you can view last month's post for that analysis. If anything, the odds of her winning the nomination have gone lower since last month with the announcement that Bernie Sanders is entering the race (which I'll be discussing more below). I'll also save my comments on Warren's Native American controversy for the headlines portion, which I actually meant to touch upon last month but did not get to do so.

3) Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)



I don't really have too much to say about Amy Klobuchar. She's kind of boring and she doesn't really excite many people outside of her state. Some argue that she'll be able to win over blue states that turned red for Trump in 2016 because she works with Republicans, but there's a big problem: she won't be able to excite the Democratic base, much like Hillary couldn't do in 2016 (a big chunk of Dem voters actually voted for Trump because of their disgust for Clinton). In order for Democrats to win in 2020, they need to nominate someone who will energize the Democratic base. I disagree with the notion that the nominee needs to appeal to moderates as much because most anti-Trump Republicans (moderates included) will vote with whatever option will get Trump out, and it will become more apparent throughout the cycle that the Democrat will be that option. Dems will also vote for their candidate no matter who they nominate due to their disgust with Trump. Oh, it's also important to mention that she came out against Medicare for All and free college during a CNN Town Hall; these are two things that the Democratic base and the mainstream Democratic Party are trying to adopt as their platform, so coming out against them does not look good at all. Will I vote for Amy Klobuchar if she is the nominee? Yes, because of my disgust with Trump as a moderate-turned-independent. Do I think she'll win the nomination? Not a chance.

4) Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)



Americans were ready to #FeelTheBern at a record pace after he decided to enter the race. In 24 hours, he raised about $6 million from 220,000 individual donors. This destroyed Kamala Harris's first day fundraising, which was $1.5 million from 38,000 donors. He then went on to raise $10 million in less than a week. He also has over 1 million supporters promising to volunteer for his campaign. Those are crazy numbers, and I believe that is one of the biggest reasons why I believe that Bernie Sanders is the current frontrunner in the Democratic nomination fight. Other reasons are that he has most of his 2016 support still behind him (Tulsi Gabbard and Elizabeth Warren's campaign numbers are lacking, and I think they will continue to slip as the race progresses, especially if/when Bernie stays in the race and starts winning a lot of primaries) and he brought a lot of policies into the Democratic mainstream. Thinking with the mindset of a Dem voter, why would I want to elect or nominate someone who has only started acting like they support things like Medicare for All and free college when the guy who started it all is in the race? Also, Bernie consistently beats Donald Trump in the polls and by some of the largest margins in the entire Democratic field. You want to know why? Because he excites the Democratic base AND he'll get the vote of most if not all anti-Trump Republicans and moderates (believe it or not, Bernie has some moderate views on things like criminal justice reform, gun control, and ending the regime-change wars). Bernie is the one to watch right now. I will be supporting him in the race (I'll write a more in-depth post later on why I've made this decision), and I hope you can, too.

2020 Exploratory Committees

1) Gov. William Weld (R-MA)



Honestly, this one kind of shocked me. I thought John Kasich was the only one who would actually pull the trigger on a Republican challenge to Donald Trump, but Bill Weld just single-handedly ruined all hopes of a legitimate primary fight (not that there was really one in the first place, but you know what I mean). It did not get much press coverage, but Weld made this announcement at an event in New Hampshire. Will he get much coverage? I don't see it happening, but I can't say for sure. My main worry about Weld's potential candidacy is that he'll be taking the challenger spot from Kasich; I've said already that only one challenger can arise in the primary, as more than one will split the anti-Trump vote and give Trump an advantage, and Kasich is the strongest of all the potential challengers. I seriously hope he reconsiders. If he declares a run, I will go more into his policy stances and his past political history in that month's edition of this blog series.

Headlines

SPEED ROUND! These are just a few quick headlines that caught my attention during the month of February.

1. Elizabeth Warren apologizes: Boy, this is embarrassing. So we found out that Warren used her 1/1024th Native American ethnicity to get ahead on her Harvard application and her application to become a lawyer. This was a story that would have gotten more coverage if the State of the Union had not been given the same night this story broke, but anyhow, this is bad for Warren. She has always been criticized for calling herself Native American, but the fact that she used it to get ahead is a whole different ballgame. Most people have forgotten about this story, but if I was on the opposition team of any Democratic campaign (minus Sanders, who doesn't do negative campaigning on non-policy issues), I would make this an important issue because it shows that she would do anything to get ahead. 
2. CNN gives town hall to Howard Schultz: This was a questionable move by CNN mostly because they billed it as a "presidential town hall" even though he had not declared yet. I actually sat down and tried to watch the event, but MAN, it was BOOOOORING. The only part that was interesting was when they asked if he would drop out of the race if his independent bid gave Trump an advantage. He said yes, and I could hear the sigh of relief across the nation. Let's just hope he follows through with that promise, or better yet, lets just hope he doesn't run at all. 
3. DNC Primary Debate Qualifications: Because I want to make sure the language is correct, I am quoting a lot in this part. In order for a candidate to qualify for the DNC debates beginning in June, according to FiveThirtyEight, "a candidate will need to get at least 1 percent support in three national polls or polls of early primary states, or raise money from a minimum of 65,000 donors from 20 states, including at least 200 unique donors per state. If more than 20 candidates meet this criteria, the party will give preference to candidates who clear both the polling and fundraising thresholds, and if that's still too many people, invitations will go to candidates who have the highest polling averages". The party also said that they will be willing to hold debates on multiple nights instead of cramming two debates into one night like the Republicans did in 2016 with their undercard debates. I think the donor requirements in particular will be a challenge to those polling under 1 percent in the polls, but because each candidate only has to accomplish the polling requirement OR the donation requirement, I still see the debates being very crowded. I think this will eliminate some candidates, but not many, and definitely not enough for only one debate stage. 
4. Kamala Harris smoking weed in college: This is such a dumb story and here's why. Marijuana should be legalized anyway because people are going to jail for a long time for selling so little of the drug. If not legalization, I think we can all agree that it should AT LEAST be decriminalized. Regarding Kamala Harris, I don't CARE if she smoked weed in college because so many people do nowadays and most younger people support it, and this story is even dumber because she lied about the dumbest thing possible: who she listened to while she did it. Because of her pandering to millenials, she said that she was listening to Snoop Dogg and Tupac while she was high. The twist? Neither existed at the time of her smoking it. Stop lying, Kamala, and stop trying to pander to millenials.  
5. The Tale of Two Rallies: Donald Trump held his first official rally of the 2020 campaign in El Paso, Texas. Beto O'Rourke hosted a rally across the street as a protest to the President's visit and his border wall. Beto's rally wasn't all that well attended, but President Trump's rally was. This should surprise nobody. Trump brings large crowds to his rallies because people want to hear the president speak. If they don't want to hear him speak, they'll protest outside of his rally. Where were a lot of Beto's supporters? Probably protesting outside of Trump's rally. This was a political stunt that failed on Beto's end. If he runs for President like I think he will, I have a feeling that that will end the same way. He can't use a failed Senate bid against an insanely popular Senator Ted Cruz to elevate his national profile, especially because this Democratic field is so large. He did come close to beating Cruz, but it wasn't enough. He'll need to focus on his policy stances, and those are pretty weak if you take a hard enough look. 

That's all for this month. I'm sure March will be even more eventful!

In Liberty,

Jacob Stech