Your 2020 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

lots of things are going to come into play in 2020 that will be different, i think most obvious being that I can't imagine many Dem candidates if any having the same baggage via reputation and years of whispers about fake crimes that Hillary did (it was pretty clear that #nevertrump didn't make as large an impact as #neverhillary), and Trump won't have the same novelty he did in 2016. and the enthusiasm factor on the right will be lower this time around, obviously (as statistically noted.)

but then again the poll numbers before Nov 2016 and other factors being noted were trending left too so who the hell knows.

any signs that polling tactics are going to change by 2020? i.e. doing it any other way than fucking landlines?

decent chance the economy will take a serious hit before the election, also.

significant chance Republicans will lose Congress and have Dems pushing impeachment, also.

My sense is that the Dems in power in Congress would be very much go-slow on the question of impeachment. They'll want Mueller to set the table for them and then take of a nibble of every dish to see if it tastes ok before they 'push impeachment'. The Dem base would need to kick up a huge stink to change that go-slow attitude to something more urgent.

Dems very unlikely to impeach under any circumstance imo

that fake "high road" shit

surprised the "high road" crew hasn't volunteered to pay for Trump's attorney as a token gesture to ensure all legal avenues are robustly addressed

There will be Dems filing articles of impeachment if (when) they take Congress. It's already happened. That's why I said "pushing".

Senate requires 2/3 majority to impeach iirc. even if the Dems take control it won't be by that margin.

there is absolutely no correlation between age and winning presidential elections. obama beat mccain, clinton beat bush, kennedy beat nixon. then again, reagan beat mondale, eisenhower beat stephenson, etc. age is simply not an aspect that a lot of voters care about when they go to the polls (and if they do, they're probably old!)

― MooVaughn.org (voodoo chili), Tuesday, March 27, 2018 3:28 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This response isn't directly responsive to my actual argument - which is that a thirtysomething is an improbable major party Presidential nominee. There have been just two in American history, both in the 19th century (when lifespan was substantially shorter), and while my argument did not necessarily extend to the prospect of such a nominee winning a two-way contest, both of them did in fact lose. While a seventysomething is also arguably an improbable major party Presidential nominee, there have been at least four, three of them in the past four decades and two of them in the past three elections, one of whom of course is the incumbent and for-now-presumptive re-nominee.

Also, to follow up the earlier comment, James Buchanan too would have continued to serve into his 70s had he not been dropped in a compromise after leading several electoral college votes at reelection.

"There is absolutely no correlation between age and winning presidential elections" is also a fairly grand statement unsupported by the evidence you cite. That sometimes a younger candidate beats an older one and vice versa does not establish that age in one direction or another was not a factor in their particular races, let alone that age does not correlate in general with win probability. Those results might be explicable, for instance, by the proposition that the closer a candidate is to a particular target age (somewhere in the middle, presumptively), the better his or her chances of winning.

While the lifespan factor makes comparison across centuries a bit meaningless, the median and mean ages of elected Presidents are both about 55, and all but four American Presidents have been within a ten-year standard deviation from that age at first election, all but one of them deviating on the older rather than younger side. The only US President elected (maybe) below age 45 (46 even) was 43 year old JFK, and he did it running against a fellow forty something just 4 years older who some believe actually won what was the second closest election in American history. In 2008, Barack Obama at 47 was more than 50% closer to the median/mean than John McCain at 72, and in 1992, Bill Clinton at 46 was more than 30% closer to than Poppy Bush at 68. In 2020, anyone over 36 would be closer to the median than Trump, but Buttigieg at 38 would be closer by a mere and probably meaningless 10%.

I'm not asserting anything like a strict rule, of course, as there are clear exceptions including those you note - besides Kennedy-Nixon (maybe, and both were below the mean rather than distributed on either side of it), Mondale was much closer to the median than Reagan (Carter too), and Stevenson than Eisenhower. But Eisenhower was a "war hero" running against an "intellectual" who literally inspired the coinage "egghead," and Reagan a guy who played a football star in the movies running against a peanut farmer/nuclear engineer who seemed lost in office and his lawyer understudy, whose "youth and inexperience" Reagan deftly used to neutralize the age issue.

Which goes to the bilateral proxy for which I believe the median age stands - a combination of seasoning/experience on the one hand with what Trump termed energy or stamina and I would term vigor (pronounced with a Boston accent) on the other. Reagan '80 appeared more vigorous than the avowed malaise of his ineffectual incumbent opponent, and remained sufficiently so in combination with experience in '84 to destroy his feckless Veep. More youthful Dukakis substantially led his older rival in '88 until the perception of his vigor was sapped first by the silly tank helmet photo-op then more seriously by his failure to respond to the Bernard King bullshit in the debate. Clinton didn't make those mistakes four years later, when a third-party didn't give him the race but smoothed his pace by more vociferously tearing down the incumbent, and it was even easier as more seasoned incumbent four years later to dispatch (albeit again with less than 50% of the vote) even older Bob Dole and his war wound, a fate similar to that which befell similarly-old John McCain against the most jocular Dem since JFK, though Mitt, younger than any of these guys and still pretty vigorous half a decade later, made it more of a race, leading many polls in the final month of the contest until the final debate (the Russia one) helped Obama close the deal.

In three recent elections, age was mostly eliminated as a factor - W was closely matched in age with both Gore (54-52) and Kerry (58-60), though closer to the median than either, and Trump was effectively even with Hillary (70-69) - and that may be one factor to help explain why all three races were among the ten closest Presidential elections in American history. The absence of a stark age difference, however, arguably made vigor an even more explicit element of these races, with a mountain biking/brush clearing vs. road biking/windsurfing contest (plus a lot of debate about who did what in the war) bookended by two contests of personal-space debate theatrics (plus complaints about the "boring" Democrat the first time replaced more recently by an almost-literal dick-measuring contest on the other side, something obviated by sex in the general election, though vigor likely remains a fairly gendered concept, and a lot of hay was made about a certain fainting episode). The same thing is already happening in the get-in-the-ring debate between Trump and Biden, however it may play in the age of "toxic masculinity."

The paper-age-sweet-spot candidates for '20 are, to name the most prominent potential contenders, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand, followed by Cory Booker and Martin O'Malley, though Steve Bullock is right in the middle too and John Delaney among the runners-up, with Bill de Blasio and at a slightly greater reach Mitch Landrieu and Amy Klobuchar just a bit older. Also in the right range would be less probable candidates like Michael Bennet, Tammy Duckworth, Keith Ellison, Gavin Newsom, Van Jones, John Bel Edwards, Cheri Bustos (among other House members I could name), and Tom Perez. Another non-candidate who would be right in the sweet spot? Michelle Obama. So would be another highly unlikely but not completely impossible fantasy candidate I won't name and you won't guess.

Others outside the sweet spot but still within the standard deviation include, on the high side from which successful Dems typically aren't drawn, Roy Cooper, Andrew Cuomo, Tim Kaine, Terry McAuliffe, Jeff Merkley, Deval Patrick, and Tom Steyer (Steve Case too; also George Clooney), most of whom I think would qualify as a bit too 'boring' for younger voters, and on the lower side, closer to the upstart Bill/Barack mold, Julian Castro, Eric Garcetti, Patrick Murphy, Gina Raimondo, and Tim Ryan (plus that "rock" guy), most of whom I think would qualify as a little green for older voters, though that may matter less in the Democratic Party, especially to the degree that the candidate shares Bill/Barack's particular combination of intellectual and rhetorical gifts with cross-cultural facility. If anyone in that group qualifies, it's Garcetti imo, but as I've said before, he'd have a tough hill to climb. Buttigieg might be able to stake a claim to those qualities too - in addition to being an accomplished and impressive guy, I think he's right to warn against "underestimat(ing) the role of surprise in politics" - but his hill would be several times higher than Garcetti's.

Of course the leading candidates today and maybe two years from now too are way the hell outside/above the range, similar in age to Trump. In addition to name recognition, a very important factor that declines in salience as the contest approaches, there are many possible explanations including the choice of the most recent President to position two experienced old hands (both of whom he toppled when they were still within the traditional range, Biden albeit just barely) as his successors, and the fact that those aging out of contention might be the most willing to challenge orthodoxy or forego waiting their turn. But it may also say something about the desire for experience in an uncertain age and against an inexperienced President who despite his age is probably the most adolescent ever elected. That said, this President was elected based in part upon a performance of vigor that dispatched many candidates of widely varying younger ages, and so any older rival is going to be faced particularly with a claim that they are insufficiently vigorous by comparison, the age similarity aside. That's something that Sanders and Warren (who I regard as potentially more vigorous in comportment, for better or worse, than some younger female contenders like Gillibrand) will be able to respond to mostly rhetorically, while the more jocular Biden can go an extra measure away from the podium.

Here are the number of people who voted for the following prospective Presidential candidates in their most recent contested (and for house races on-year) general election for highest office sought (and, for scale, percentage of potential electorate which that vote represented, using voting-eligible population for races for the Presidency and Senate, voting-age population for House races, and registered-voter population for state and local races):

Joe Biden - 65,915,795 (30%) [as Senate candidate, 257,484 (41%)]
Tim Kaine - 65,853,516 (29%) [as Senate candidate, 2,010,067 (34%)]
John Kerry - 59,028,444 (29%) [as Senate candidate, 1,959,843 (42%)]
Kamala Harris - 7,542,753 (30%)
Kirsten Gillibrand - 4,822,330 (36%)
Jerry Brown - 4,388,368 (24%)
Tammy Duckworth - 3,012,940 (34%)
Sherrod Brown - 2,762,757 (32%)
Roy Cooper - 2,309,157 (34%)
Andrew Cuomo - 2,069,480 (18%)
Amy Klobuchar - 1,854,595 (48%)
Jay Inslee - 1,760,520 (41%)
Elizabeth Warren - 1,696,346 (35%)
Michael Bennet - 1,370,710 (35%)
Jason Kander - 1,300,200 (~30%)
Deval Patrick - 1,112,283 (27%)
Terry McAuliffe - 1,069,789 (20%)
Martin O'Malley - 1,044,961 (30%)
Cory Booker - 1,043,866 (17%)
Richard Blumenthal - 1,008,714 (39%)
John Hickenlooper - 1,006,433 (35%)
Chris Murphy - 815,077 (32%)
Jeff Merkley - 814,537 (28%)
Bill de Blasio - 726,361 (14%)
John Bel Edwards - 444,517 (23%)
Eric Garcetti - 331,310 (16%)
Joe Kennedy - 265,823 (46%)
Steve Bullock - 255,933 (39%)
Keith Ellison - 249,597 (44%)
Tim Ryan - 208,610 (37%)
Bernie Sanders - 207,848 (42%)
Eric Swalwell - 198,578 (34%)
John Delaney - 185,770 (32%)
Cheri Bustos - 153,519 (29%)
Seth Moulton - 149,638 (25%)
Luis Gutierrez - 133,226 (26%)
Gina Raimondo - 131,899 (17%)
Mitch Landrieu - 53,441 (23%)
Julian Castro - 29,454 (5%)
Pete Buttigieg - 8,369 (16%)

Here, also for reference, is the student population of the University of Notre Dame - 12,292

Senate requires 2/3 majority to impeach iirc. even if the Dems take control it won't be by that margin.

― evol j, Tuesday, March 27, 2018 9:05 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The House impeaches, the Senate tries and potentially convicts.

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-just-six-senate-votes-away-impeachment-651857

trade for larry appleton

lots of things are going to come into play in 2020 that will be different, i think most obvious being that I can't imagine many Dem candidates if any having the same baggage via reputation and years of whispers about fake crimes that Hillary did

― omar little, Tuesday, March 27, 2018 6:45 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"years of whispers" (i.e. bullshit), ok, but otherwise this is potentially naive - some anticipate that something will be trumped up against any prospective nominee, quite possibly with falsified evidence.

with no evidence whatsoever I'm gonna say that the funnier candidate always wins

Trump's personality is repellant but at least he occasionally said funny things. Obama was clearly more personable and funnier than both McCain and Romney. Ditto for GWB and those stiffs, Al Gore and John Kerry. And come on, Bob Dole? Give me a freakin' break. At least Reagan was good for a zinger or two. Anyway, its too bad Al Franken turned out to be such a creep.

You might have something there. sorry but Trump ethering the entire GOP field was frequently very funny

(but I guess really this is just another variant on the "which candidate would you rather have a beer with" concept and tbh I don't think there was much of a winner on either side there)

I always thought Bob Dole was kinda funny on his talk show appearances..

Trump may have been funny in the republican primary debates, but no one's laughing now, including him

I remember when the '04 dem candidates tried to do "funny" / "relatable" ads and the best one was by....Gen. Wes Clark

trump is still funny but not as often as during the campaign. i buy the funniest candidate hypothesis

with no evidence whatsoever I'm gonna say that the funnier candidate always wins

Trump's personality is repellant but at least he occasionally said funny things. Obama was clearly more personable and funnier than both McCain and Romney. Ditto for GWB and those stiffs, Al Gore and John Kerry. And come on, Bob Dole? Give me a freakin' break. At least Reagan was good for a zinger or two. Anyway, its too bad Al Franken turned out to be such a creep.

― frogbs, Wednesday, March 28, 2018 5:53 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Gore beat Bush FYI (and Dole would probably be widely regarded as funnier than Clinton by most people who know both well). As you said, "funny" and "personable" and the beer test are all the same thing, standing in for ease (which Dole and McCain will never entirely possess, nor will most outsiders of various kinds), which in turn stands in for a combination of cultural orientation and high school popularity standings.

Why are you still here

He is right in this instance, though. How does the funny candidate hypothesis explain Clinton and Gore winning the popular vote?

the electoral lollege

I think the candidate who has the best vision for America always wins

fire and fury brother

Bob Dole's peak vision was the time he called Carter, Reagan and Nixon "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Evil"

my memory is that bob dole did seem kinda funny sometimes but i think i might be subconsciously confusing him w/ norm macdonald.

maybe this is an unpopular opinion but idk trump isn't funny

i'm having bad flashbacks to a terrible sarah vowell column from the early 00s where she argued that gore should have tried to present himself as a lovable, self-deprecating nerd instead of an uptight, pedantic nerd.

I think the candidate who has the best vision for America always wins

― had (crüt), Wednesday, March 28, 2018 6:19 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Got it, you think Trump had the best vision for America

maybe this is an unpopular opinion but idk trump isn't funny

other than some of his old, exceptionally petty tweets, this is correct, he as a person is not funny (and is of course a loathsome creep and all the rest). watching chuds like Cruz and the like helplessly flail around unsure of what to do or how to get a foothold was absolutely funny, though

Garcetti's got at least one "hang out with a politician who definitely doesn't have larger aspirations -- at a bar!" appointment in Iowa coming up following a speaking gig, seems suspicious

He is right in this instance, though. How does the funny candidate hypothesis explain Clinton and Gore winning the popular vote?

― Frederik B, Wednesday, March 28, 2018 1:14 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the electoral lollege

― Simon H., Wednesday, March 28, 2018 1:18 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thank you, Simon

Yeah, that was pretty good.

Trump's "humor" is the kind of thing that gets that cruel, grunting laugh people do when they're expressing disdain or mocking someone. There's no catharsis in it, just a really insecure sense of superiority

Dole was good for an acerbic putdown or two, so he was sometimes funny, but never was Dole "personable."

At the annual Gridiron Club dinner, an event in Washington, DC largely devoted to political humor, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole told a story about a recent event when he saw former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon standing together on the podium. Dole claimed that he told people to “Look! Hear no evil, see no evil, and evil (Nixon).”

maybe this is an unpopular opinion but idk trump isn't funny

he's not but he was at least funnier than Hillary "Pokemon Go to the polls" Clinton. the way he destroyed and humiliated Jeb is still hilarious. and in retrospect clearly the peak of his political career.

when you realizing his dissing of anyone and everyone isn't outright hostility but his incredibly poor attempt at banter, it makes more sense

he's not but he was at least funnier than Hillary "Pokemon Go to the polls" Clinton

ok why are you doing this

howard stern lives in his brain iirc

Explains the rest of his post

ok iirc howard stern lives inside of flappy bird's brain let's not get it twisted

Trump not funny ever. Hillary so cringey and awkward, no wit. Biden funny like my pervy uncle. I would imagine WJ Clinton to be pretty funny--I'm sure someone can weigh in on that.

Reagan had pretty good wit, if you're into that sort of thing. Gore's always seemed forced in public.

Al Gore never quite 'belonged' as a seminary student, but he came mighty close.

I think the candidate who has the best vision for America always wins

― had (crüt), Wednesday, March 28, 2018 6:19 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Got it, you think Trump had the best vision for America

― Moo Vaughn, Wednesday, March 28, 2018 6:29 PM (one hour ago)

did you seriously just post this right after saying "Gore beat Bush FYI"

Yes. Had the vote been properly counted, Gore would have "won the electoral college" as well as the popular vote.