I guess even now, some Democrats are looking to 2020, hoping we will get a Democrat in the White House, and save whatever is left of Roe v. Wade and the ACA. But I think I am a keen observer of things, and I suspect it may not be the simple.
Simply put, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were swept into office by a unique set of circumstances. It in fact may never be repeated in our lifetimes. I am serious.
Bill Clinton got in because of the Ross Perot effect. Say what you will, but he never got more than half even the popular vote. Even when he was reëlected in 1996, he still had Perot to thank.
President Obama had the fact that a huge wave of African Americans, who didn’t ordinarily vote, showed up in droves.
Say what you will, but no other candidate will have either of these factors working in their behalf, even if they seem a shoo-in. Conventional wisdom suggested that Al Gore would surely win in 2000, after strong economy and a popular Democrat. But he didn’t.
Anyways, I don’t know who read these boards. But I have a suggestion, of sorts. Why not have another African American run for POTUS in 2020? Why not? By then, more of the vote will be suppressed, yes. But you never know.
What do the rest of you think? As I said, there may be simply no other way.
I think you are underestimating the Ds and overestimating the Rs. Even with a good economy, Bush Sr. trailed Dukakis by a whopping 17% in the polls at one point in 1988 so Gore losing to Bush Jr. was no surprise. As for Perot, I believe the analysis is that he took roughly equal votes from Bush and Clinton alike.
And if even Bush and Obama trailed Kerry and Romney in the polls at one point in 2004 and 2012, respectively, then surely by extrapolation Trump will be in a deep hole come 2020, if he’s even running again.
Obama mobilized the black vote so much not merely because he was black, but because he was the first non-white president, and thus had the “Let’s make history” novelty factor going for him.
After Obama, any black Democratic candidate will just be seen as a standard/”normal” Democrat, no different than a non-black D such as Biden.
I think the best idea is to put up which ever candidate excites the Democratic electorate and in the process wins the Democratic primary. Deciding on a chosen one, particularly one that screams of tokenism is not going to help matters.
Four years is a long time and things can change, but so far all signs point to a Democratic win in 2020. Note that the Republicans have come in second in the popular vote in 6 out of 7 of the last elections, so they can’t really be crowing too much about some sort of dominant advantage. Trump won by promising his supporters the earth and moon, but has since shown that he is incapable of even basic governing. His campaign slogan of I alone can make everything right again, isn’t going to play so well the second time around when even with both houses of congress at his fingertips he still couldn’t make coal profitable again, or make a heath system that people like better than Obamacare.
If the Democratic Party should learn anything from the 2016 election, it’s that they should completely set aside any aspirations or game plans for 2020 & instead focus all their energy on the 2018 midterms. Just forget about the presidency for a year and a half, because the party at the local and state level is a steaming crater.
That said, as much as a hate to admit it, maybe nominating a celebrity is the way to go. Nearly half the electorate has proven that they’re so addled by disinterest & apathy that they wouldn’t even bother bother voting against a vile sexual harasser & proud con-man to lead their nation… Someone like Oprah or the Rock at least will keep enough people entertained until the time comes to vote. Trump has shown that turning the US government into a reality show is a winning strategy, might as well use it to their advantage.
What else are the Dems going to do? The bench is empty aside from the usual Wall Street shills (Clinton, Booker, Coumo), narrowly popular lefties incapable of winning the primaries (Warren, Sanders) & a few decent pols who by either good sense or pragmatism have no desire to run (Franken, Brown).
This is a story Republicans told each other to console themselves over the loss. There’s not much evidence that it’s actually what happened.
He had that fact, but at least in 2008 he would have won without it. Hillary almost won with 2004-level black turnout, and Obama had a lot more white support than she ended up getting.
I think the OP is very much underestimating Democratic strength. Republicans have, since the Reagan anomaly, fared as follows:
1988 Beaten the least charismatic candidate in history in Dukakis
1992 Lost as the incumbent party to an upstart albeit charismatic candidate
1996 Run a fossil because it was his turn, lost to incumbent
2000 Won as a minority thanks to an ill-designed ballot and confused voters and with a big assist from a partisan Supreme Court
2004 Won as incumbent thanks to organized smear of opponent
2008 Ran a fossil because it was his turn, lost to one of the great presidents of modern times
2012 Ran out of touch millionaire against charismatic incumbent
2016 Won as a minority thanks to 25 year smear campaign against opponent, with big assist from Vladimir Putin and the unwitting help of the FBI
That track record doesn’t indicate to me that Democrats are swimming against a strong current.
I agree that we should not worry about 2020 until 2018 is done. First win Congress and as many statehouses as possible. Then capitalize on running against the illegitimate President Pence in 2020, sweep Congress and as many statehouses as possible, then get to gerrymandering where possible.
Goddammit, no. Democrats can win without gerrymandering. Republicans can’t. Even if you’re amoral about the electoral process, it’s a far better strategy for Democrats to end gerrymandering than to take it over temporarily.
We’ve got excellent technological tools to end gerrymandering, and we’re in a moment where it can actually happen, with work. This should not be the major issues for Dems, but it should be something Dems unite in.
Yes, we should focus on 2018. But out here in the net-sphere, we can talk about whatever we like, so right now I’m in favor of a whole bunch of Democrats running, including even older folks like Biden and Sanders, if they like.
In principle, I agree with you. But in practice, I fear that the only states in which gerrymandering could be ended are those where Democrats control. So why should we offer level playing fields when Republicans will tilt the ones they control in their favor?
Because the partisan goal is to get Republicans to lose the states they control, not simply to fight a rearguard battle.
Get Democratic states to use independent districting methods (or adversarial ones), and this becomes an issue on which people can run. Eventually this becomes an amendment to the constitution, and in future decades it’ll beggar belief that we used to let parties gerrymander for control, in the same way it beggars belief that we used to prevent women from voting.
Did Obama do ‘that much’ better among black voters? My understanding is the democrat candidate normally gets about ~90% of the black vote, while Obama got 95%. And maybe a a % of the electorate, the black vote went up 1%. So instead of being 12%, it might have been 13%.
But would that alone make much of a difference? Obama won the popular vote by 7% in 2008 and 4% in 2012.
I’m not sure about the democratic plan. Dems are losing the white working class by huge numbers, and I’m not sure how to win them back. Policy ideas may win a few, but deep down inside I think the WWC votes republican due to cultural issues and identity politics, which the democrats are not really able to run on with that group, nor should they.
In my understanding there are disproportionately high numbers of black people in many key swing states – particularly FL, NC, and MI, and still significant numbers in OH and PA.
Ignorant question to which I should know the answer – How much of the WWC votes in most elections? Did Trump bring out a bigger percentage of that group than Romney or McCain did? If so, can he bring them out again in 2020?
I know a couple of people who are rabid Trump fans who I’m pretty sure didn’t vote in 2008 or 2012. I don’t know if they are outliers or representative of a fairly large group.
I think (or maybe it’s just I hope) the dynamics in 2020 will be different for the Pubs than they were for the Dems in 2012. I believe that a lot of Pubs thought that people who voted for the first time in 2008 did so to make history by electing the first African-American president, and that many of those people would not vote in 2012. I’d like to believe that those who voted in 2016 in order to “stick it to the man” will come to believe that getting their guy in the WH didn’t really change much, and will not bother to vote in 2020.
One thing we could do is take back the language. Calling it “cultural issues” and “identity politics” rather than “not being racist” and “equal rights” just plays into the GOP story.
