Even though I gave the above posts a hard time, intuition says they're representative of the attitudes of many voters who swung to Trump. Not sure what the prospects are for winning them back and what effect that reality will have on the primaries. On the one hand, Democrats seem to be having some of electability jitters losing Republicans had 4 years ago. Remember when Rubio and Christie looked like they'd be well armed with electability cases in the primaries but maybe not enough to overcome Scott Walker's appeal to the base?
I’m not sure electability matters as much in an election with an incumbent. 2020 will probably be a referendum on Trump, so probably just about anyone capable of winning the nomination would be able to win the general election if Trump is unpopular. (And won't be able to win if he's popular.)
You’d think this logic would hold as well even in elections without an incumbent, but it often doesn’t work that way. E.g., Bill Clinton’s popularity not rubbing off on Gore, and ditto for Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Yeah, that's true. Which means Trump looking vulnerable might well attract a field the size of GOP 2016.
Can you think of 17 Democrats trying to defeat Trump?
Well, here is my recently compiled list of 25 people most likely to run for the Democratic nomination:
*bump*
OK, here is my updated list of the top 25 most likely to run for the Democratic nomination:
1 O’Malley
2 Booker
3 Warren
4 Cuomo
5 Gillibrand
6 Castro
7 Klobuchar
8 Harris
9 Murphy
10 Bullock
11 Sanders
12 Gabbard
13 McAuliffe
14 Biden
15 Hickenlooper
16 Merkley
17 Brown
18 Franken
19 Kander
20 de Blasio
21 Garcetti
22 Inslee
23 Schultz
24 Kaine
25 Clinton
But that's not even a complete list of those who might do it. You could also include Bob Iger, Sheryl Sandberg, John Kerry, Deval Patrick, and then Russ Feingold just did an event in Iowa, so maybe him too.
And you've also got to assume that if it were to actually be as big a field as GOP 2016, then there'd be candidates like Jim Gilmore, who have no hope of going above 0% in the polls, and won't even be invited to debates. There are plenty of people who could end up in that category. E.g.,
Geoffrey Fieger is already running ads. There are plenty of backbenchers in the House who could run as well.
