Surprisingly astute piece from the rabidly anti-GOP they call vox
Everyone’s running.
By Matthew Yglesias Dec 17, 2018, 8:00am EST
Vox’s internal tracking document of who is “considering†running for president currently includes 34 names on the Democratic side. That’s a huge field.
The list doesn’t track who has said they’re running in 2020. No Democrat has said so at all. Instead, our tracker includes candidates who are doing everything but saying it.
There’s Kamala Harris, a California senator who keeps finding reasons to visit Iowa. There’s Sherrod Brown, the senator from Ohio, whose wife (herself an accomplished journalist) tweeted that they’re thinking about it. And there’s Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who keeps rolling out splashy legislation while developing a sudden interest in foreign policy. And, of course, there’s Joe Biden, who’s made no secret of his continued interest in the White House, and Bernie Sanders, whose team has been holding meetings all year.
The field includes a lot of senators, a few governors, a couple of business leaders — even mayors and a Senate candidate who lost.
And while obviously not all 34 of these Democrats are going to stay in the mix long enough to appear on a ballot in Iowa, the odds seem overwhelming that there will be a half-dozen or more who meaningfully contest early primaries.
So why, then, do so many Democrats think it’s worth trying? Because President Donald Trump is unpopular, because and there’s no clear Democratic figure in line for the nomination. These two factors are drawing in more Democrats than in a typical year, setting up a 2020 primary race where anything can happen.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/17/18134587/democratic-candidates-2020-race
