Top 6 2020 Presidential Frontrunners

Predictions as of 10/22/2018, as Republicans take a lead in Nevada and Arizona, they look almost sure to hold on to the Senate, while Democrats’ popular vote lead sees them well ahead in the House:

The 2020 Presidential campaign began on Wednesday November 9th 2016, when America woke up to discover Trump’s victory. The race may not officially begin until late 2019, but the battle has already begun, and is sure to intensify the day the midterms are done. Since 2016, the President has made it clear that he intends to run for re-election in 2020, and a rather large number of Democrats have been setting themselves up to challenge him, not to mention several #NeverTrump Republicans. But who actually has a chance of winning?

6. Vice President Joe Biden

On first glance, Joe Biden is a strong candidate for the Presidency. He has the name recognition to cut through a Democratic nomination process that could easily involve 20+ candidates. With 7 terms in the Senate and 2 terms in the Vice-Presidency, no one could ever question his experience. Combine this with his close relation to Obama, who is now seen as practically the father of modern Democratic politics, and he seems a strong contender to win the nomination. Having done so, he could run a campaign on his traditionally moderate politics. He’s always tried to position himself as a man of the people, and his trips to Wisconsin and Michigan clearly indicate some thought about a potential 2020 strategy. Add to this the fact that he was born in Pennsylvania, perhaps the most important swing state in the country at the moment, and he may seem like the perfect answer to Trump.

But Biden has run for the Presidency twice before, in 1988 and 2008, losing horribly both times. 1988 is particularly interesting, as Biden was considered a strong candidate from the very beginning, until he was destroyed by a long string of controversies: Accusations of plagiarizing speeches from the leader of the British Labour Party, as well as Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey; involvement in plagiarism whilst he was at law school; lying about graduating in the top half of his class (he came 76th/85); claiming he earned 3 degrees when in fact he only got 1; and claiming that he received a full scholarship, when in fact he only got a half-scholarship. Biden is also, to be blunt, very old, currently aged 75. This means that by the end of a two term Presidency starting in 2021, he would be 86 years old. On top of the obvious mental and physical health concerns associated with this, it’s worth noting that during the primaries for the midterms, Democrats have tended to prefer younger, female candidates, and anti-establishment candidates have also been doing a little better than expected. Joe Biden is very strong on paper, and has a perfectly good shot, but it seems as though his time has probably come and gone.

5. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand

So how about a young(er), more liberal, female Democrat? Elected once to the House and thrice to the Senate, soon to become four times as she romps to victory in her New York re-election bid, Kirsten Gillibrand may well be the new face of the Democratic Party. With the weight of the mighty New York Democrats behind her, she is a fundraising titan, with $20 million raised towards defending her perfectly safe Senate seat this cycle alone. And though she may be a full blown liberal today, at the beginning of her political career she was a much more moderate Democrat, something she could plausibly call upon once she’s got the nomination in the bag and needs to appeal to the nation as a whole. On the other hand, her ties to the Clinton family and her being a female New York Democrat may well make it very easy for her to become linked in voters’ minds to Hillary Clinton, which would almost certainly not be a good thing for her campaign. Interestingly, unlike some on this list, she hasn’t yet visited Iowa or New Hampshire, the early primary states, which is considered a key step in building up for a Presidential campaign. Even unconventional candidates like Trump visit these states well before the primaries begin, so this might indicate that she isn’t yet sure about running in 2020, hence her place near the bottom of this list.

4. Senator Kamala Harris

Who’s an even more powerful and wealthy ally in a Democratic primary process than the New York Democrats? The California Democrats of course! Kamala Harris is one of a tiny group of candidates who could have a chance at outmatching Gillibrand on fundraising, and is another comparatively young female Senator. She’s even more liberal than Gillibrand, and although she is relatively new to the Senate, this could almost work in her favour, as younger Democrats seem keen to get rid of the old guard of the Party. As if this weren’t enough, she is the best candidate on this list for appealing to the Democrats’ African-American base, which is crucial during primaries. This could also be very useful during a general election. Although many Democrats believe that their path to victory in 2020 is to regain the Upper Midwest, specifically Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, this is hardly their only plausible route. By motivating African-American turnout, Harris could make a serious play for Florida and North Carolina, and perhaps even make Georgia and Arizona genuinely competitive. With the Trump campaign also needing to defend slim and faltering majorities in the Upper Midwest, this strategy could make for a very strong campaign indeed.

3. Senator Bernie Sanders

To all intents and purposes, Bernie Sanders is already running for President. His 2016 campaign never truly ended, and support for him is still strong within the party. He’s visited the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and even has a book out this year. The real question is not whether he will run, but whether he can win. We can clearly see from the 2016 primaries that he has a lot of support, he won 43% of delegates and only narrowly lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. That said, Clinton was not an especially popular candidate among Party members, hardly inspiring the levels of enthusiasm Obama or Sanders generated. So if Sanders couldn’t beat Clinton, could he beat any of the candidates on this list?

Furthermore, at 77 he’s even older than Biden, there has been some talk of a one term pledge, where he promises not to run for re-election, but not from Sanders himself, and it’s likely that such a pledge would harm him during the nomination process as Democrats will be keen to get a strong incumbent into office to secure a win in 2024. In a general election, he may struggle due to being perceived as a socialist, which is still a word with strong negative associations for many Americans, particularly those in high turnout demographics. Despite all this, he is almost definitely running, he has an established base of enthusiastic supporters, and extreme views are growing more popular and electable, as President Trump shows. Sanders is going to be a political heavyweight during the primaries, and his chances should not be underestimated.

2. Senator Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren is Hillary Clinton’s natural successor, and the one to watch in the Democratic primaries. She has her finger on the pulse of the party, is generally a very skilled politician, and has incredible fundraising abilities with the support of the Massachusetts Democrats, having raised $34 million for her totally uncompetitive re-election campaign this year. She was outspoken on opposing Kavanaugh, has been a fierce Trump critic since the beginning of the 2016 campaign, and was rumoured to be a possible VP pick for Clinton. She has strong support from the left and centre of the Party membership and from across the party establishment – she even received two electoral votes for the Vice Presidency in 2016 from faithless electors. She is running, and she is utterly formidable. A political juggernaut like her on the left wing of the Party may well instantly knock Gillibrand and Sanders out of the running after the first couple of primaries, and if she manages to win the Democratic nomination she would be a similarly fierce candidate against Trump. The only conceivable mark against her is her close association with the deeply unpopular Clinton, which will likely be quietly harming her campaign throughout the process.

1. President Donald Trump

This one is obvious. We know he’s running, we know he’s so popular amongst Republican members that he’s practically guaranteed the nomination, and as an incumbent in an age of two term Presidents we know he has a good shot at winning. His unpopularity is overblown, he’s managing about 42% approval ratings, only slightly worse than Obama’s were at this point in his Presidency. Although the 2018 midterms are looking to be messy for the GOP, holding level in the Senate and losing about 40 House seats, the 2010 midterms were much worse for Obama, with the Democrats losing 6 seats in the Senate and 63 in the House. This all suggests that Trump should be just fine in 2020.

On the other hand, Obama had a lot more room for error between his campaigns. In 2008, he was elected with a 7.2 point popular vote margin and 365 electoral votes, whereas Trump actually lost the popular vote by 2.1 points in 2016 and received only 304 electoral votes. Obama could comfortably afford to lose North Carolina, Indiana, and the 2nd congressional district in Nebraska in 2012 and see his popular vote margin shrink to 3.9 points, while still winning very well. Trump has no such luxuries in 2020. He needs to hold on to very narrow margins in Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well as protecting unreliable Republican majorities in North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa and Arizona. He can afford to lose one or two of these, but no more. In terms of opportunities to attack, Trump has New Hampshire, Nevada and perhaps Maine at large. With only 4, 6 and 2 electoral votes respectively, none of these are very exciting for him. However, Minnesota has a full 10 electoral votes, and although it hasn’t voted for a Republican Presidential nominee since 1972, Clinton only won it by 1.5 points in 2020, so Minnesota is very much on the table and could potentially turn the election on its head. Trump is by far and away the most likely candidate to win the Presidency in 2020, despite a variety of strong potential challengers setting themselves up to face him down, and the power of incumbency should not be underestimated.

Kavanaugh And Legitimacy

Predictions as of 10/7/2018, as predicted, fresh polls showing Republicans consolidating their leads in Texas and Tennessee have brought Democratic chances to win the Senate to a new low:

The Supreme Court has perhaps always been a party political body. It’s inevitable, really, given that Justices are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. But the Court has always attempted to maintain an impression of impartiality, and even in the modern day Chief Justice John Roberts has made it extremely clear that he wants the court to hold on to this non-partisan appearance.

However, in the bitter struggle to appoint Kavanaugh to the Court, all air of non-partisanship has dissipated. The confirmation process was transparently a partisan fight, leading voters to become only more entrenched in their opinions as Democratic approval of Kavanaugh dropped heavily through the process, whilst Republican approval of the nominee went up. Kavanaugh himself was openly partisan in the hearings with Ford, and in the final Senate vote 97 of the 98 Senators who voted did so along party lines. Despite a fleeting and slightly strange news cycle about a possibility that Trump was going to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, which was probably a diversion tactic carried out by the President to draw attention away from the confirmation hearings, the eyes of the public were for weeks focused on Ford, Kavanaugh, and the Senators who would decide his fate.

So what happens if the Supreme Court comes to be viewed by the public as a strictly partisan body? Perhaps we can assume that its approval ratings will shift to match those of Trump or the GOP. Certainly during the Obama and Trump administrations, when a liberal Justice was seated Democrats came to approve of the Court much more highly, while Republicans became much more likely to disapprove of the Court, and vice-versa for a conservative Justice. It seems reasonable to predict that the confirmation battle over Kavanaugh will only reinforce this trend, and that we can expect to see approval of the Court amongst Democrats drop dramatically this year.

But what does this mean? Well, the Supreme Court has no army. Its power stems from its legitimacy, and its legitimacy stems from public opinion, which is traditionally quite favourable for the Court. When the Court ordered Nixon to release the tapes that ultimately spelled his doom, it had no power to force him to do so. The tapes were released because Nixon anticipated that the political fallout of refusing a Supreme Court order would be greater than that of simply releasing the tapes, even though he knew that releasing the tapes was very likely to result in the end of his Presidency. But this Supreme Court order was unanimously agreed upon by the Justices, in a time when the majority of Americans had a lot of faith in the Court. In the latest court and the hyper-partisan national environment, it’s hard to imagine all 9 Justices agreeing on anything at all, let alone an action against a prominent political figure. Perhaps if that decision in 1974 had been reached by a 5-4 majority in a Supreme Court viewed as a party political body, with approval ratings of around 40%, Nixon would have felt that the consequences of refusing the order were minimal. Afterall, in order to avoid removal from office all he needed was the support of most of the Republican Senators.

Moving away from the theoretical and back to the reality of the moment, will Democrats see the Supreme Court as legitimate now that Kavanaugh has been confirmed? Frankly, it seems extremely unlikely. Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh were both confirmed to the Court despite allegations of sexual assault made against them, and are both deeply conservative. The Court rules on a wide variety of issues, but perhaps the most likely to trigger a full blown legitimacy crisis are those pertaining particularly to women. The Court is likely to be make conservative rulings on issues surrounding sexual assault, gender equality, and abortion, perhaps even seeking to overturn Roe v Wade, and all of these rulings will probably be made by a 5-4 majority, where 2 members of the majority have been accused of sexual assault. Democrats will surely never respect these rulings or see them as legitimate, and by extension will perceive the Court as simply another arm of a polarised and partisan federal government. Maybe if the Democrats were to gain control of the Senate and Presidency simultaneously in the future they would even consider stacking the Court, adding perhaps another 2 liberal justices to form a 6-5 liberal majority, justifying this move by reminding voters that the GOP blocked Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for 293 days and of course by calling upon memories of the Kavanaugh confirmation battle. If this were to happen, or the Democrats were to gain control of the Court by any other means, it seems overwhelmingly likely that Republican faith in the institution would become very low indeed.

Finally, an unpopular Supreme Court could call into question the legitimacy of the federal government as a whole. Trump’s approval stands at around 41%, Congress’s approval is a mere 18%, and hasn’t been above 50% since the beginning of the century. The majority of Americans disapprove of the President, and a vast majority disapprove of Congress, so if a majority were to disapprove of the Supreme Court, Americans would disapprove of all 3 branches of the federal government. This paints a dark picture of national politics, but perhaps it would be unsurprising. The 2016 Presidential election signalled an historic turning point. We are in a time when no quarter is asked nor given. When “bipartisanship” is little more than a buzzword used by the occasional maverick congressional candidate during election season. When every norm in politics is cast aside in favour of pursuing the most politically expedient course of action. The war for hearts and minds has reached a new level of brutality, and shows no signs of calming down.

How The GOP Just Won The Supreme Court And The Senate

Predictions as of 10/6/2018, showing a sharp change after a week’s polling and Supreme Court drama:

Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed to the Supreme Court of The United States by a Senate vote of 50-48. Everyone voted along party lines, with the exception of Joe Manchin, a Democrat from deep red West Virginia, voting yes. Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska simply marked herself as “present”, and Republican Steve Daines did not vote as he was at his daughter’s wedding. With this vote, the GOP has secured a conservative majority in the Supreme Court that will probably last for a decade or more. The Republican party now controls all three branches of the federal government. Simultaneously, their chances of maintaining control of the Senate in 2018 have leapt up dramatically, with polls showing them closing in on the Democrats nationally, and pulling ahead in key Senate races. How?

Put simply, Trump and Republican Senators managed to cast the Kavanaugh battle as a tipping point in a larger political war surrounding #MeToo. Until recently, the #MeToo campaign was something of a silver bullet, drawing vigorous support from Democrats and not too much ire from Republicans. But the battle for Kavanaugh’s confirmation has changed everything. Kavanaugh gave a fiery, passionate and emotional testimony declaring total innocence. Trump claimed that men are assumed to be guilty when accused with sexual assault, claiming “It’s a very scary time for young men in America”, and is one of many on the right implying that Ford is flat out lying in an attempt to bring Kavanaugh down. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham notably said during the hearings that as a single white male from South Carolina he is told he “should just shut up” when discussing issues relating to gender and sexual violence. And there has been a general Republican narrative that the GOP believes Dr Ford and considers her to be a credible witness, but also think that she is mistaken when she says she is 100% certain that her assailant was Kavanaugh.

In doing this, the Republican party has mobilised its base against #MeToo. Trump and Kavanaugh are carefully speaking to a fear of liberal culture, especially feminism, which is widespread amongst the Republican base, and was a crucial part of Trump’s victory in 2016. Lindsey Graham is seeking to relate to this base, as a Southern man who feels his voice is not being heard on these cultural issues. And the overall GOP narrative manages to absolve Kavanaugh of wrongdoing without directly insulting the sympathetic and generally respected Ford. This strategy was never going to convert Democrats or even win over undecided Independents, but it has turned the issue into a strictly partisan battle, and that is all the GOP needs. The tipping point districts in the House are almost all more Republican than the nation as a whole. The three most likely tipping point races in the Senate are Texas, North Dakota, and Tennessee, all of which are deep red states where Trump has positive approval ratings. Democrats need to win over at least some typically Republican voters in order to win the midterms, and individual Democratic candidates running for seats in Republican leaning regions are willing to make compromises on major issues such as gun control and Nancy Pelosi’s potential rise to Speaker of the House. But with Kavanaugh, the GOP convinced its supporters to take up a political stance on which Democratic candidates simply cannot compromise, and the result is political checkmate.

Take one-term Democratic incumbent Heidi Heitkamp running for re-election in North Dakota. In 2012, she won by only 2936 votes in a high turnout race. North Dakota is 17 points more Republican than the nation as a whole, and Trump’s net approval ratings there are about 5-10 points positive. Heitkamp’s choice to oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination has resulted in a huge swing against her in the polls, which have gone from dead even to giving her opponent Kevin Cramer a double-digits lead. This swing is devastating to both her campaign and the national Democratic struggle for the Senate.

Joe Manchin of West Virginia, which is 19 points more Republican than the nation as a whole, took the opposite path. He is the only Democrat in the Senate to vote to support Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and is holding on to a steady lead in the polls. A week ago Trump held a rally in West Virginia, which he used to campaign for Kavanaugh’s nomination. It is crystal clear that Trump has made the confirmation battle a key issue in the midterms, and by doing so has struck a heavy blow to the campaigns of every red state Democrat who voted against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. This includes many of the key Senate races: North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri and Montana. It also poses difficult questions for the Democratic candidates in Texas and Tennessee. It seems reasonable to guess that Trump will be visiting at least some of these states and doing everything in his power to keep voters in them thinking about Kavanaugh, and how their Democratic Senators voted against his confirmation.

Perhaps the confirmation battle will fade from memory as the unrelenting news cycle ploughs on to greater controversies. Or perhaps Kavanaugh’s confirmation with enthuse the Democratic base to turn out to vote in unusually high numbers for a midterm election. Whether one of these nor neither becomes a reality, we can expect a stream of Senate polls over the next week in red states that look at least concerning for Democrats, and our model is sure to react to those, pushing Republican chances of controlling the Senate even higher. Even if Democrats can shore up their defences in Missouri, Montana, Indiana, and Florida, as well as securing pickups in Nevada and Arizona, it’s all for nothing if they can’t win any of Texas, Tennessee, and North Dakota. And right now, all three of those are looking good for the GOP.