Are Democrat Ready for 2020? Maybe Not

Joe Biden, November 11, 2016. Photo by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

At The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan details the litany of bad news that befell the GOP during the 2018 midterm elections and asks the question, does that “portend the defeat of Donald Trump in 2020?”

Buchanan answers his own question with “Not necessarily.”

He explains:

To consider: Nancy Pelosi may want to close out her career as speaker with solid achievements, but she could face a rebellion in her party, which is looking to confront and not compromise with Trump.

The national debt may be surging, but Capitol Hill progressives will be demanding “Medicare-for-all” and free college tuition. Trump-haters will be issuing reams of subpoenas and clamoring for impeachment.

Other Democrats, seeing the indulgent attention their colleagues are getting from the media, will join in. Chairman Jerrold Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee may have to accommodate the sans-culottes.

Is this what America voted for?

By the Ides of March, a dozen Democrats may have declared for president. But looking over the field, no prospective candidate seems terribly formidable, and the strongest, unlike Barack Obama in 2008, are too old to set the base afire.

According to a USA Today poll, 59 percent of Democrats say they would be “excited” about “someone entirely new” leading the party in 2020. Only 11 percent say they would prefer a familiar face.

Yet, who did these same Democrats view most favorably? Joe Biden, a 76-year-old white male first elected to the Senate when Richard Nixon was president.

As you can see from Pat’s analysis, the Democrats, despite some recent strength at the polls, have a host of their own problems to deal with. Chief among them, as Pat notes near the end of his post is the reliance on identity politics by the Democrat Party. He writes:

In identity politics, loyalty to race, ethnic group and gender often trump the claims of party. The diversity Democrats celebrate is one day going to pull their party apart, as the social, cultural and racial revolutions of the 1960s pulled apart the party of FDR and LBJ.