At the dawn of 2019, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren became the first major Democratic candidate to formally launch a 2020 presidential campaign. Conventional wisdom, and some early polling, suggested that her national name recognition and party-leader status would put her ahead of most likely candidates at the starting blocks, but behind former Vice President Joe Biden and the 2016 nomination runner-up, Sen. Bernie Sanders, if they entered the race.
That, however, was supposed to be just the pole positioning. As other candidates became better known, and Democratic voters’ priorities became clearer, the order would surely be reshuffled.
Yet here we are, ringing in 2020, with polls showing that nothing much has changed after all those months of candidates giving thousands of stump speeches, hundreds of interviews, dozens of town halls and forums, and a half-dozen nationally televised debates.
Biden still leads the national polls with a little under 30 percent, followed by Sanders at just under 20, and Warren around 15, according to averages kept by both Real Clear Politics and The Economist. The others remain in single digits — though the cast of those running has shuffled somewhat along the way.
All of this might change dramatically as voters start actually voting, a month from now. But so far, it’s been a lot of status quo.
That doesn’t mean these 12 months haven’t mattered. We’ve learned quite a bit along the way that might help us understand what’s to come.
Here are five things I’ve taken away from the 2019 primary campaigns.
Voters didn’t flee the front-runners. Many Democratic insiders — myself included — have been very skeptical of both Biden’s and Sanders’ prospects as the process played out.
Sure, we said, both start strong in the polls, as befits the party’s most recent vice president and nomination runner-up, respectively.
But, as I indelicately put it last January, this is no country for old men. Biden and Sanders, I cruelly jibed, are candidates “for those who think Baby Boomers aren’t quite old enough to take responsibility.” Increasingly woke, forward-looking Democrats would undoubtedly find their latest version of John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.
That might very well still happen; one candidate aiming for that new-blood mantle, Pete Buttigieg, is surging in Iowa and New Hampshire polls. But so far, Democrats have stuck with the old-timers.
Many theories abound for this. I currently lean to the notion that Democratic voters, still traumatized by somehow blowing the 2016 election and terrified of somehow screwing up 2020’s, don’t trust themselves to step toward any potential new hope.
Nobody much wants to talk about impeachment. Despite the apparent unanimity, and intensity, of Democrats’ horror at President Donald Trump’s abuses of office, there hasn’t been much talk about impeachment on the campaign trail.
Plenty of Trump-bashing, to be sure — just check out recent TV ads from Biden and Mike Bloomberg — but not much of the I-word.
Whether following the Mueller report’s release in April, or during the House proceedings of the past few months, the candidates and their audiences have mostly tabled the topic.
Even now, with nearly all Democrats agreeing that Trump deserves to be impeached, few believe that he might be removed from office. Most see it as a futile exercise, probably unhelpful politically, yet morally required.
They seem to view impeachment sort of like minor surgery. If it must be done, just get it over with quickly — and let’s definitely not sit around talking about it.
They want to talk about health care instead. Health care seems, in a way, the antithesis of that impeachment discomfort. Democrats entered 2019 confident that it is a political winner for their party, having seen congressional candidates across the country run winning campaigns emphasizing the issue.
If you’ve watched the televised debates closely, you might have noticed that candidates tended to pivot quickly on impeachment-related questions, talking instead about broader themes. Health care questions, in contrast, triggered deep, focused answers and discussions.
Similarly, question time at many candidate events — those of Sanders, notably — often turn into prolonged personal tales of health insurance woes, and discussions about policy.
But, health care has not necessarily proven to be safe ground. Warren, despite years writing about health care debt, initially de-emphasized the topic, then got drawn into releasing a detailed plan, and found herself criticized from the left and the right for it.
Full-throated advocacy for Medicare-for-all has pleased Sanders’s devotees, but also has much of the party afraid of his general-election viability. Biden’s defense of the Affordable Care Act has reinforced with many that he lags behind the party’s current thinking.
The truth is, not one candidate thus far has seemed to gain anything from their health care positions or rhetoric. But not talking about it hasn’t helped anyone, either.
It’s not about what you’ve done. Four impressive current or former state governors ran for the nomination, emphasizing that, unlike the speechifying legislators in the race, they had actually accomplished things as government leaders. Three of them — Steve Bullock of Montana, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, and Jay Inslee of Washington — have dropped out after failing to rouse any interest.
The fourth, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, roams the lonely hustings, boasting to the few who will listen that he has actually done the things other candidates tout their plans for.
Other candidates largely skim their past governmental accomplishments as they tell their selective stump autobiographies.
Things you’ve done often turn out to be things to be criticized.
Kamala Harris didn’t talk much about her time as California’s attorney general, which includes elements criticized by criminal-justice reformers. You’d be forgiven if you didn’t even know that Amy Klobuchar was county attorney for eight years before becoming a U.S. senator. Pete Buttigieg has little to say about his mayoral record, which has been criticized by racial-equity advocates. Joe Biden talks about accomplishments by proxy as part of the Obama administration, but more often finds himself on the defensive about his Senate record.
Even Elizabeth Warren doesn’t spend much time on the trail touting her leadership at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
One of the most forceful past-tense claims from this field of candidates has been Sanders’ “I wrote the damn bill” zinger. That was in reference to his health care legislation — see point three, above — which never actually advanced in the Senate.
Democrats are super-pumped, and really deflated. However it’s measured by pollsters, the signs are clear: Democrats are extremely interested in the 2020 election, and eager to vote, volunteer, contribute, march, or do whatever they can to help defeat Trump.
They also think that nothing matters, everything is doomed, and their country has turned into something they can neither understand nor control.
That might be an overstatement of the gloom, but you don’t have to scratch hard to find a Democrat’s despair these days.
That might be contributing to their inability to settle on a candidate — a strong majority say they could still change their minds — or a message that excites them for the 2020 battle ahead.
Many party insiders fret over which candidate can re-ignite some positive passion, particularly among key members of the Democratic coalition. There is little agreement about which candidate can do that, or even what it would mean.
Perhaps, however, once the party eventually has a candidate, whoever that turns out to be, the distraction of choosing will fade, and Democrats will be able to focus on the thing that does elevate their interest and enthusiasm: their shared enmity of the president they want to defeat.
