Can fire only be fought with fire? Or, hate with hate? Or, outrage with yet more outrage? This is at the million dollar question that Democrats are facing this primary season, which has been well underway since the midterm election in November and will likely go on until May or June of next year. Will they be better positioned beat Trump in 2020 with left-wing populist or someone more moderate?
The number of candidates is quickly growing and by the time the first debate rolls around this June, there could be as many as thirty of them vying for a chance to participate. A similar fight was won by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the midterm elections against those who wanted to run them more aggressively. Former attorney general Eric Holder quipped “when they go low, we kick them” and Michael Avenatti, famous for being porn star Stormy Daniel's lawyer, said that you have to fight Trump with a slingshot. Yet Pelosi's wisdom won the day and the House of Representatives. She coached her caucus to shut down Trump's flame throwing by simply not reacting (remember your mother's advice to ignore that bully?) and therefore not letting him set their agenda. It worked: Democrats talked about healthcare and taxes and Republicans winced while Trump refused to talk about the good economy (too boring!) and instead, whipped up an imaginary crises along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Despite this win, it is very hard to battle this inclination to engage in a knife fight with Trump. Both Democrats and Democratic voters are beyond good and angry, they see it as a moral crusade—for the good of the country and the world—to deny him another four years in the White House. Therefore, choosing a candidate is much more than a question of style or ideology, pollafter pollshows that the only thing that really matters to Democratic voters is that the candidate can beat Trump.
This clashes with the old adage about the parties: Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. There is truth in this that I have observed first hand over the year, a need that Democrats have to vote for someone they love. It also clashes with another conventional truth about primaries: since they are low turnout affairs for party faithfuls, they tend to give voice to the more extreme ends of each party. Candidates most often have to play to these ends during the primaries and do a pivot to the centerfor the general election.
For an article surveying the Republican candidates in 2015, I borrowed a useful concept from Fivethirtyeight.comthat situated each candidate in one ring or overlapping rings of a 'five ring circus' of ideological tendencies. Fivethirtyeight.com has indeed come up with set of graphicsthis time around to help explain the many Democratic candidates, but rather than a set of circles, they've mapped each candidate in terms of their appeal to five different voter constituencies: black voters, millennials, the left, party loyalists and Hispanic/Asian. This is useful because these constituencies are overlapping and the charts for each candidate reflects how wide or narrow their appeal is. This also reflects how in U.S. politics, with its presidential system and 'big tent' parties, coalition building happens during the primary and general election processes, rather than after the election, as it does here in Spain.
So, who are these candidates competing for the heads and hearts of Democratic voters? Let's start with a very brief list of the contenders and then we'll move on to the various metrics that may or may not determine future success.
These familiar faces need little introduction, they've been out campaigning and governing for decades. Their years of services plus being older white men is just about all Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have in common.
Joe Biden, former Vice President, is known for his prowess with white working class voters, he's also known to be a bit impulsive and prone to letting an f-bomb slip now and then which ups his bonafides as a fighter. However, he embodies the argument that Democrats must fight from the center and especially win back white working class voters.More importantly, he has been accused recently of being too touchy with women on the campaign trail and in the era of #metoo, this and his subsequen non-apologyis not winning him any support.
Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont, on the end other, embodies the argument of fighting populism with more populism. Sanders whips up the left like none other, promising healthcare for all and free university tuition. Yet, he's fairly despised by party loyalists who think he hurt Hillary Clinton's chance of winning in 2016.
These up and comersdon't have the familiarity and name recognition of Sanders and Biden, but what they have in common are proven track records in office and are known beyond their home states by anyone who follows national political news. Ladies first (there are four of them, for a change!) then we'll look at three men.
Elizabeth Warrenhas been the Senator from Massachusetts since 2013 and is known for her role as the architect of Obama's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For her name recognition and age (and whiteness), I could have grouped her with the 'familiar faces' but she's been in the public eye for much less time. Warren has big appeal to Sander's voters—in fact, they often followed up their 'not that woman' objection to Hillary Clinton in 2016 with their desire to vote for Warren. Unlike Sanders, Warren doesn't spark the ire of party loyalists because she stayed out of the 2016 primary and campaigned hard for Clinton. She has, however, sparked ridicule from Trump, who calls her 'Pocahontas' because of her storied native-American ancestry. She even went so far as to have a DNA test and announced the results just ahead of the midterms, something that didn't impress Democrats who wanted to keep the media focus firmly on the issues.
Kamala Harrisbecame a Senator from California in the 2016 election but her years of public service extend further back, with her years as the high profile California Attorney General. Beyond her political experience, as both an African and Indian-American and a woman, she ticks a lot of Democratic boxes and therefore has wide appeal across varying Democratic constituencies including black voters, Asians, Latinos, yet is also liked by party-loyalists. On the campaign trail, she's been inching to the left, embracing issues such as single-payer health insurance. She also has proved her consistent and longstanding opposition to the death penalty, something that hasn't always been easy, such as when she was the San Francisco district attorney and took a widely unpopular step of opposing it's use against the murderer of a 29-year old police officer. This will be popular among the left but is a much more touchy issue among moderates who don't like candidates who appear soft on crime.
Kirstin Gillibrandrepresented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives until 2009, when she was named to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat when she became Secretary of State. Since then, Gillibrand has been elected three times. Known as a moderate 'Blue Dog' Democrat during her years in the House, Gillibrand has wide appeal across Democratic constituencies and even supports so-called leftwing proposals such as Medicare for All. She hold special appeal for women and feminists since one of her signature causes has been fighting sexual harassment in the military. She received a lot of press during the #metoo movementwhen she stated in an interview that Bill Clinton should have resigned after the Monica Lewinsky incident and it was therefore unsurprising that she was the first Democrat to call on Senator Al Franken to resign after he was accused of sexual misconduct.
Amy Klobucharwas first elected to the Senate in 2006, representing the state of Minnesota and therefore, the moniker 'Minnesota nice'. That is, until word came out shortly after she started running for president thatshe isn't always all that nice to her staff. Like Biden, the argument for Klobuchar is about capturing white, Midwestern, voters and moderates. That said, her appeal seems to be fairly narrowly focused on party loyalists, making challenging for her to build the coalition of voters she'll need to get the nomination.
Cory Booker, like Harris, appeals to black voters, Millennials and the party loyalists, but he doesn't have the same overall appeal that Harris has. Booker has been a Senator for New Jersey since 2013 and before that was the high profile mayor of Newark, NJ, where he became known for heroics, like saving a woman from a burning building, rescuing a freezing dog or having people over to his house during a power outrage. While some may see him as a super-hero, the left sees him as a shill for big corporate interests. Interestingly, all this puts him on the side of finding a moderate to fight Trump's populism and recently conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks lauded Bookerfor his ability to appeal to people's basic decency.
Beto O'Rourkeis the newest face among these and gained notoriety for running a Senate campaign against Ted Cruz in 2018. He didn't win, but he came within striking distance, which is a pretty big deal since he was a Texas Democrat running against an incumbent Republican who was also the runner-up for the 2016 Republican nomination. O'Rourke makes millennials swoon as well as party loyalists and some Latinos and he's be compared to Obamaand the Kennedy. He got some grief for his announcement videowith his wife looking on admiringly and silently and also for saying that his wife raises their three children 'sometimes with his help'.
The name of the game for any Democratic candidate is building a coalition of voters that will get them to the nomination finish line and then allow them to add moderate and swing voters who didn't bother with the primaries but will be key to a victory against Trump. These maps lay bare who has broad appeal (Harris' map has very little white space on it, as does Gillibrand's and Booker's) vs. those who have just one corner in the bag (Sanders on the left or Amy Klobuchar with the party loyalists).
But these maps aren't the only way to measure candidates, polling remains the favorite 'crystal ball' for journalists and pundits, even with its limits and their often limited understanding of polling. Right now, the polling isn't a very good indicator of who might win the nomination because many voters haven't had the chance to get to know most of the candidates. This is why Sanders and Biden are consistently coming in first. Biden, for example, has an 8 point lead in the aggregated RealClearPolitics polling, followed by Sanders, Harris and Warren.
Another important metric, especially in U.S. campaigns, is fundraising and that's where O'Rourke made his mark when he announced his campaign and raised $6.1 million dollars in online donations in the first 24 hours after the announcement, beating Sanders' record $5.9 million. Harris raised $1.5 million in her first 24 hours. But like polling, a lot of this early data is a result of name recognition, but it is significant when they show an ability to get lots of smaller donations, since they can go back to those donors again and again, as opposed to bigger donors that will hit limits imposed by the FEC (Federal Election Commission). Primary campaigns are marathons that require a constant cash flow.
Like in 2015 when I wrote about the Republicans, we are still a whole year away from the actual primaries and as we all know, a year is an eternity in politics. For example, in 2015, I left out Trump—as everyone else did at the time—because it seemed absolutely inconceivable that we would see a serious campaign out of the man who invented the Obama birther movement. Similarly, I doubt we will see a viable campaign out of Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO, about as much as I doubt that Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey will jump into the race. But, either an Obama or Winfrey candidacy would be a game changer.
Much like the polling and data that we lean on, political analysts are good at explaining where we are and perhaps even how we got here, but not always so accurate when it comes to predictions. Democratic voters want a winner but don't all agree on whether the winning ticket lies in angry, left-wing populism or pragmatic moderation, but it's a worthwhile argument to have on their way to 2020.
The Spanish version of this article was published in esglobal.