When the 2020 campaign started, I thought it was relatively open-ended. The key word here is relatively. In fact, we usually have a pretty good idea about who’s going to win a party’s nomination. When the ballot includes an incumbent, the incumbent wins. When the ballot includes a sitting or recent vice president, the vice president wins. Simple enough.
Sometimes surprises happen, but usually not too surprising. Clinton led in 2008 until Obama won the nomination. But Obama was hardly a nobody. And while Trump’s nomination surprised lots of people, myself included, we probably shouldn’t have been too surprised. The polls predicted it early. In fact, even early primary polling predicts pretty well.
But I’ve seen some legitimately surprising things this time. This post is about the surprises of the 2020 campaign.
1. Julián Castro is a good candidate.
I wrote about Castro earlier, where I called him “the forgotten progressive”. Look, it’s much less catchy than “capitalism’s heart surgeon,” my name for Elizabeth Warren. My point was that people overlook Castro. But Castro doesn’t come from nowhere. He has a long record of public service for someone who’s under 45 years old. And that service paints a clear and distinct picture: a generic, mainstream Democrat who quickly rose through the party ranks as a young man, won a mayor’s race in a large city, won a prime speaking slot at the 2012 convention, served in a relatively ho-hum manner as HUD Secretary, and towed the party line at every major junction. With only rare exceptions.
Castro moved toward bigger things, acting in the cautious manner of the politician who accomplishes a lot for himself but not much for the public. When I saw his name on a list of presidential candidates, I figured he’d run a milquetoast campaign aimed at showing he could shore up the ticket and win over some voters as the vice presidential candidate. Not much worth paying attention to.
But it’s not going like that. He proposed the best immigration plan in the field, and he endorsed a progressive policy slate well to the left of his past work. He influences other candidates on the specific issue of immigration, notably Elizabeth Warren. Since then, he released a comprehensive plan on Native issues, earning him the endorsement of several Indigenous leaders ahead of the Native American Presidential Forum in Sioux City, Iowa.
Well ahead of expectations.
2. Bernie Sanders has the most diverse voter base.
I wrote about this earlier, where I argued Sanders needs a diverse base to win and he’s doing well. Now he’s doing even better. A diverse base alone won’t give Sanders the nomination, but he needs one. So far, he’s getting it done.
Pundits pounded Sanders in 2016 left and right for a base too white, too male, etc. Much of this criticism was disingenuous, but it wasn’t wrong. Who voted for Sanders? A coalition of young (usually white, usually male) independents, college students of all genders and races, and wealthy white progressives. He won 43% of the popular vote, but the coalition skewed white and male. Enough to ultimately render him no threat to Hillary Clinton’s path to the nomination.
I always thought he could expand his base, and now he has. For the most part, Elizabeth Warren now wins the wealthy white progressive segment and some of the college students, but Sanders retains the rest. He also now wins working-class voters of all races. As a result, his current base is remarkably balanced by gender and race and heavily tilted toward lower income voters. He could start from this base to build power in interesting ways that work around the typically feckless Democratic Party. ‘Could’ is the operative word. He hasn’t done that yet, but he’s working on it.
Maybe this is ephemeral and Sanders is running on name recognition. But I seriously doubt it. His polling numbers and base are very consistent, arguably more so than any other candidate. At no point has his polling average gone below 14-15% or above 23-24%. And the numbers indicate his base is more enthusiastic than anyone else’s. About 10% of primary voters really want Sanders to be the nominee. And plenty of others prefer it.
3. The major mainstream candidates (Biden and Harris) are running awful campaigns.
And then there’s Joe Biden. As the intuitive heir to the Obama legacy, you might think ‘ol Joe would be doing really well. I guess. But you might be aware he ran for president in 1988 and 2008, and he considered it several other times. Each time, he flailed about rather haplessly. Why would the 2020 campaign be different? I guess I’m not shocked he’s running yet another hapless campaign and trying to back his way into the nomination.
Harris is the bigger surprise. On paper, she’s probably the most plausible candidate in the field. She’s ‘progressive’ enough to attract voters from Sanders or Warren. And she’s ‘mainstream’ enough that the Democratic Party bigshots love her. She’d be the first black women elected president, and this would be an undeniably significant achievement. When she announced her candidacy, polls gave her a major boost. And when she had a well received performance in the first debate, they gave her another.
And then…that’s about it. She’s shown no skill at retaining these voters or building on her momentum. She flip-flops on issues, trying to simultaneously please the various Democratic Party factions. As a result, while she’s still on a lot of lists, she rates as the first choice of very few voters. She’s losing voters to Warren (primarily) and Biden (secondarily). She could still win, but she’s not trending in the right direction.
2020 Campaign
So, where are we headed with these things? Biden and Harris might recover, and Biden’s still pretty well positioned. Sanders might lose the diverse base or he might expand it. Castro might revert to his old self or he might continue pushing in the right direction.
All three of these ‘2020 campaign surprises’ remain open-ended.
