Who will Democrats choose to go up against Trump in 2020?
Joe Biden – the original Democrat forerunner – isn’t doing himself any favors.
Judging by media reports and public perception on all his scandals (from sniffing girl’s hair to all his debate ‘flubs’ to Burisma) Joe lost his spot at the top almost as soon as he got in the race.
Early on in the Democrat presidential race, media doted on Kamala Harris, but we all saw how that went.
Bloomberg’s campaign has been a total non-starter.
Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg have both had their turns topping the polls, but unfavorable dirt has been dug up on them, too, and their favorability has not been too long lasting.
So, is the party now turning to Bernie, who lost against Hillary for the Democrat party’s nomination back in ’16?
That could be the case, according to new reports.
See for yourself:
Do you think Bernie Sanders - who has been endorsed by the most (in)famous faces of the current Democrat party, like AOC, and just soared past Warren in the polls to 2nd place behind Biden - is the best the Democrats have to choose to go head-to-head up against President Trump next year?
Politico has more to explain about why Democrats may be turning to Bernie to lead their party into the 2020 election:
Suddenly, Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is being taken seriously.
For months, the Vermont senator was written off by Democratic Party insiders as a candidate with a committed but narrow base who was too far left to win the primary. Elizabeth Warren had skyrocketed in the polls and seemed to be leaving him behind in the race to be progressive voters’ standard-bearer in 2020.
But in the past few weeks, something has changed. In private conversations and on social media, Democratic officials, political operatives and pundits are reconsidering Sanders’ chances.
“It may have been inevitable that eventually you would have two candidates representing each side of the ideological divide in the party. A lot of smart people I’ve talked to lately think there’s a very good chance those two end up being Biden and Sanders,” said David Brock, a longtime Hillary Clinton ally who founded a pro-Clinton super PAC in the 2016 campaign. “They’ve both proven to be very resilient.”
Democratic insiders said they are rethinking Sanders’ bid for a few reasons: First, Warren has recently fallen in national and early state surveys. Second, Sanders has withstood the ups and downs of the primary, including a heart attack. At the same time, other candidates with once-high expectations, such as Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke, have dropped out or languished in single digits in the polls.
“I believe people should take him very seriously. He has a very good shot of winning Iowa, a very good shot of winning New Hampshire, and other than Joe Biden, the best shot of winning Nevada,” said Dan Pfeiffer, who served as an adviser to former President Barack Obama. “He could build a real head of steam heading into South
Carolina and Super Tuesday.”
The durability of Sanders’ candidacy has come as a surprise even in some states where he performed strongly in 2016 and where he is attempting to improve his standing ahead of the 2020 election.
California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who defeated a Sanders-backed Democrat for his seat in the liberal-heavy San Francisco area in 2016, said Sanders has been “more resilient than I anticipated.”
“But in retrospect,” he added, “he has a very, very loyal following, and people have really stuck with him.”
Sanders is in second place in national polls, nearly 9 percentage points behind Biden, according to the most recent RealClearPolitics average. He is second in Iowa and first in New Hampshire. The latest CNN poll found he has the highest net favorability rating of any Democratic presidential candidate.
The Guardian also speculated on Bernie's potential to win the Democrat nomination:
Bernie Sanders addressed a crowd of thousands at a beachside rally in Los Angeles last Saturday, capping a six-day swing through the most populous US state.
“Our campaign is not only about defeating [Donald] Trump, our campaign is about a political revolution,” Sanders said. “It is about transforming this country, it is about creating a government and an economy that works for all people and not just the 1%.”
The sight of the cheering crowd would have been hard to imagine just two months ago, as Sanders recovered from a heart attack and a fellow progressive senator, Elizabeth Warren, surged past him in the polls for the Democratic nomination.But since then, Warren has slipped back, and Sanders has regained lost ground, demonstrating the resiliency of his leftwing campaign. Those strengths have some in the Democratic party wondering: could Sanders actually win the nomination the second time around?
According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Warren was 12 points ahead of Sanders and virtually tied with the former vice-president Joe Biden in early October, shortly after Sanders’ heart attack. But since then, Warren has been slipping, and Sanders has pulled ahead of her. The polling average now shows Sanders in second place once again – averaging 19.3% in national polls, putting him eight points behind Biden and four points ahead of Warren.
“I believe people should take him very seriously. He has a very good shot of winning Iowa, a very good shot of winning New Hampshire, and other than Joe Biden, the best shot of winning Nevada,” Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to Barack Obama, told Politico. “He could build a real head of steam heading into South Carolina and Super Tuesday.”
Sanders does certainly seem to be learning from some of the pitfalls of his campaign in 2016, when he lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. For example, Sanders was criticized for performing far better in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, which are mostly white, before losing to Clinton in the more racially diverse states of Nevada and South Carolina.
Join the conversation!
Please share your thoughts about this article below. We value your opinions, and would love to see you add to the discussion!