Which currently unknown candidates will be known in two years, and how?

[Mr. Morden]

Since it seems like there’s a decent chance that the 2020 Democratic field will have ~13-14 or more candidates, and the networks seem reluctant to put more than 10 people on the debate stage at once, we face the very real prospect of having “kiddie table” debates for the second tier candidates once again.  These will probably be people who average ~2% or less in national polls.

Which candidates do you think are most likely to end up in that category?

EDIT: Based on the discussion later in this thread, I'm now less interested in the original question I posed, so I'm going to scrap it and ask a different (but related) question, which is this:

Most of the likely 2020 Dem. candidates are unknown to the average voter at the moment.  The average voter has no idea who Kirsten Gillibrand is, let alone Julian Castro or Seth Moulton.  Which of the likely 2020 Dems who are currently unknown will become reasonably well known between now and the day of the first Democratic primary debate in 2019?  And what will be the main cause(s) of their higher profile?  Will their campaign launch itself be what propels them, or will they manage to boost their name ID well before that (and how)?

[Hoosier_Nick]

I think O'Malley seems like a shoe-in if there are over a dozen candidates and they only fit in say 8 or so. Maybe Steyer or Sandberg as well, someone with low name ID. Even McAuliffe or Chafee would be likely (with Chafee almost certainly there if he runs).

[Bull Moose Base]

Jesus, remember Christie had to one of these but managed to bounce back and then trigger Rubio's malfunction? A better way to do it would probably be to cut the field in half randomly to give anyone a fairer shot to grow but I guess that won't happen.

Anyway, yes, O'Malley is the most likely to run/be stuck in low single digits. In general, it'd be people who regardless of their merits would struggle to attract media attention even if they're well-known on a place like this e.g. Bullock, Murphy, Merkley, Hickenlooper if they run.

[Mr. Morden]

Here’s the thing that you need to think about: The 2016 GOP field was big, but it was also filled with a bunch of people who were already reasonably well known years before the election.  Folks like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and of course Donald Trump already had decently high name recognition well before they announced their candidacy.  So when Fox News announced before the first debate that they were going to only allow the top 10 candidates based on an average of polls, most of those slots were already “taken” by candidates with a decent amount of support, who were able to get ~5% or more in no small part because of pre-existing name recognition.

The 2020 Democratic field doesn’t really look like that, at least going by the people who are 1) younger than 75 years old, and 2) dropping the most hints of interest.  Assume for a minute that Biden’s and Sanders’s ages prevent them from running, and that Al Franken sticks by his Shermanesque denial and also doesn’t run.  Who else is out there who would have >50% name recognition right now?  Warren and maybe Booker?  The average voter has no idea who Kirsten Gillibrand is, let alone Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, or Seth Moulton.  So if you were to take a national poll right now, and weren’t including Biden, Sanders, Clinton, or Oprah Winfrey, then what is the order of the remaining candidates?  Warren in front for sure, and then maybe Booker a distant second, and beyond that a crapshoot, because most people don’t know who these candidates are.  (O’Malley might actually not do that bad if most of the other names are unknowns.  At least a few folks will remember O’Malley from his campaign last year.)  So if you were to do this national polling to determine debate qualification right now, the results would seem pretty random, based in no small part on whose name sounds nice.

But of course, the polls that will determine debate qualification aren’t being taken right now.  They’re being taken 2+ years from now.  So the question we need to consider is who is going to successfully manage to transform themselves from unknown to household name in the next two years, and how are they going to do it?  I mean, Cruz was still largely unknown to voters at this point four years ago, yet he managed to get a substantial increase in name recognition over the next two years (largely because he was an agent of chaos who pushed the party into a government shutdown….is that what Klobuchar is going to have to do to get noticed?   )?  Can the playbook of a Cruz or a Christie or someone else who managed to get famous *before* they ran for president be replicated in some way by the current crop of candidates?  Or are the parties too different for that to be feasible?

And is getting more fame more of a public game, where you pull off some stunts in the public square, in order to get more attention?  Or is it actually an insider’s game, where you sell yourself to Democratic bigwigs and big money donors, and then once you manage to convince a share of the party elite that you’re a Very Serious Contender For the Nomination, that in itself will lead to media coverage?  Is that how Marco Rubio did it?

[Technocracy Timmy]

The 2020 Democratic field doesn’t really look like that, at least going by the people who are 1) younger than 75 years old, and 2) dropping the most hints of interest.  Assume for a minute that Biden’s and Sanders’s ages prevent them from running, and that Al Franken sticks by his Shermanesque denial and also doesn’t run.  Who else is out there who would have >50% name recognition right now?  Warren and maybe Booker?  The average voter has no idea who Kirsten Gillibrand is, let alone Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, or Seth Moulton.  So if you were to take a national poll right now, and weren’t including Biden, Sanders, Clinton, or Oprah Winfrey, then what is the order of the remaining candidates?  Warren in front for sure, and then maybe Booker a distant second, and beyond that a crapshoot, because most people don’t know who these candidates are.  (O’Malley might actually not do that bad if most of the other names are unknowns.  At least a few folks will remember O’Malley from his campaign last year.)  So if you were to do this national polling to determine debate qualification right now, the results would seem pretty random, based in no small part on whose name sounds nice.

This is what's gonna make 2020 a tough race for Democrats. Their bench, as it stands, is severely lacking. A lot of people will point to Clinton in 92', Obama in 2008, etc. but the Democrats had 12 and 8 years of a GOP Presidency to field strong candidates in midterm years that swung against the GOP during their WH durations and created strong fields in 1992 and 2008.

Right now there isn't a strong field, and 2018 might see a strong backlash to the GOP but many candidates don't run after only two years in office.

[Mr. Morden]

The 2020 Democratic field doesn’t really look like that, at least going by the people who are 1) younger than 75 years old, and 2) dropping the most hints of interest.  Assume for a minute that Biden’s and Sanders’s ages prevent them from running, and that Al Franken sticks by his Shermanesque denial and also doesn’t run.  Who else is out there who would have >50% name recognition right now?  Warren and maybe Booker?  The average voter has no idea who Kirsten Gillibrand is, let alone Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, or Seth Moulton.  So if you were to take a national poll right now, and weren’t including Biden, Sanders, Clinton, or Oprah Winfrey, then what is the order of the remaining candidates?  Warren in front for sure, and then maybe Booker a distant second, and beyond that a crapshoot, because most people don’t know who these candidates are.  (O’Malley might actually not do that bad if most of the other names are unknowns.  At least a few folks will remember O’Malley from his campaign last year.)  So if you were to do this national polling to determine debate qualification right now, the results would seem pretty random, based in no small part on whose name sounds nice.

This is what's gonna make 2020 a tough race for Democrats. Their bench, as it stands, is severely lacking. A lot of people will point to Clinton in 92', Obama in 2008, etc. but the Democrats had 12 and 8 years of a GOP Presidency to field strong candidates in midterm years that swung against the GOP during their WH durations and created strong fields in 1992 and 2008.

Right now there isn't a strong field, and 2018 might see a strong backlash to the GOP but many candidates don't run after only two years in office.

I don't actually agree with your framing of it though.  I don't consider it a "weak bench" in the sense that it's filled with candidates who would struggle in a general election.  Many of these folks would do fine in a general election if they were actually nominated.  Name recognition is irrelevant in the general election, because if you actually manage to win a major party nomination, then everyone will know who you are.

What I'm talking about instead is the field being filled with candidates who may or may not be good (let's see them run before passing judgment), yet are starting out with very low name recognition, who thus face the prospect of being winnowed out of contention as early as August or September 2019 because they haven't (yet) managed to gain a high enough profile to qualify for the debates.  They might be perfectly capable of performing well in said debates, but if the field is huge and the networks won't allow everyone to debate (or they push the "lower tier" candidates to a secondary debate that no one watches), then candidates might be winnowed out on the basis of polls being taken just a couple of months after candidates declare their candidacy, six months before anyone actually votes.

[Technocracy Timmy]

The 2020 Democratic field doesn’t really look like that, at least going by the people who are 1) younger than 75 years old, and 2) dropping the most hints of interest.  Assume for a minute that Biden’s and Sanders’s ages prevent them from running, and that Al Franken sticks by his Shermanesque denial and also doesn’t run.  Who else is out there who would have >50% name recognition right now?  Warren and maybe Booker?  The average voter has no idea who Kirsten Gillibrand is, let alone Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, or Seth Moulton.  So if you were to take a national poll right now, and weren’t including Biden, Sanders, Clinton, or Oprah Winfrey, then what is the order of the remaining candidates?  Warren in front for sure, and then maybe Booker a distant second, and beyond that a crapshoot, because most people don’t know who these candidates are.  (O’Malley might actually not do that bad if most of the other names are unknowns.  At least a few folks will remember O’Malley from his campaign last year.)  So if you were to do this national polling to determine debate qualification right now, the results would seem pretty random, based in no small part on whose name sounds nice.

This is what's gonna make 2020 a tough race for Democrats. Their bench, as it stands, is severely lacking. A lot of people will point to Clinton in 92', Obama in 2008, etc. but the Democrats had 12 and 8 years of a GOP Presidency to field strong candidates in midterm years that swung against the GOP during their WH durations and created strong fields in 1992 and 2008.

Right now there isn't a strong field, and 2018 might see a strong backlash to the GOP but many candidates don't run after only two years in office.

I don't actually agree with your framing of it though.  I don't consider it a "weak bench" in the sense that it's filled with candidates who would struggle in a general election.  Many of these folks would do fine in a general election if they were actually nominated.  Name recognition is irrelevant in the general election, because if you actually manage to win a major party nomination, then everyone will know who you are.

This is contingent on many factors that we can't necessarily predict now. But the far reaching negative effects of a Trump or Pence administration will take years to be felt. Barack Obama left a fairly strong country in place when he left office, and the positive effects of his administration is what will be felt for the next few years.

[Mr. Morden]

The 2020 Democratic field doesn’t really look like that, at least going by the people who are 1) younger than 75 years old, and 2) dropping the most hints of interest.  Assume for a minute that Biden’s and Sanders’s ages prevent them from running, and that Al Franken sticks by his Shermanesque denial and also doesn’t run.  Who else is out there who would have >50% name recognition right now?  Warren and maybe Booker?  The average voter has no idea who Kirsten Gillibrand is, let alone Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, or Seth Moulton.  So if you were to take a national poll right now, and weren’t including Biden, Sanders, Clinton, or Oprah Winfrey, then what is the order of the remaining candidates?  Warren in front for sure, and then maybe Booker a distant second, and beyond that a crapshoot, because most people don’t know who these candidates are.  (O’Malley might actually not do that bad if most of the other names are unknowns.  At least a few folks will remember O’Malley from his campaign last year.)  So if you were to do this national polling to determine debate qualification right now, the results would seem pretty random, based in no small part on whose name sounds nice.

This is what's gonna make 2020 a tough race for Democrats. Their bench, as it stands, is severely lacking. A lot of people will point to Clinton in 92', Obama in 2008, etc. but the Democrats had 12 and 8 years of a GOP Presidency to field strong candidates in midterm years that swung against the GOP during their WH durations and created strong fields in 1992 and 2008.

Right now there isn't a strong field, and 2018 might see a strong backlash to the GOP but many candidates don't run after only two years in office.

I don't actually agree with your framing of it though.  I don't consider it a "weak bench" in the sense that it's filled with candidates who would struggle in a general election.  Many of these folks would do fine in a general election if they were actually nominated.  Name recognition is irrelevant in the general election, because if you actually manage to win a major party nomination, then everyone will know who you are.

This is contingent on many factors that we can't necessarily predict now. But the far reaching negative effects of a Trump or Pence administration will take years to be felt. Barack Obama left a fairly strong country in place when he left office, and the positive effects of his administration is what will be felt for the next few years.

OK?  I'm not sure what that has to do with what I was talking about.  If you're saying that we don't know exactly who is going to be a good candidate and who isn't, then I agree.  The solution to that is to have a primary race, and let them fight it out.  But what I'm saying is that otherwise good candidates might be winnowed out of the process too early because of the arbitrary whims of media oxygen, and arbitrary cutoffs in the number of candidates allowed at a debate.  At a certain level, that's true in every primary race, but it seems like things might go awry and otherwise "good" candidates might get left out if you have an enormous field of candidates and insist on winnowing people out just a month or two after the race gets started.

[Technocracy Timmy]

The 2020 Democratic field doesn’t really look like that, at least going by the people who are 1) younger than 75 years old, and 2) dropping the most hints of interest.  Assume for a minute that Biden’s and Sanders’s ages prevent them from running, and that Al Franken sticks by his Shermanesque denial and also doesn’t run.  Who else is out there who would have >50% name recognition right now?  Warren and maybe Booker?  The average voter has no idea who Kirsten Gillibrand is, let alone Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, or Seth Moulton.  So if you were to take a national poll right now, and weren’t including Biden, Sanders, Clinton, or Oprah Winfrey, then what is the order of the remaining candidates?  Warren in front for sure, and then maybe Booker a distant second, and beyond that a crapshoot, because most people don’t know who these candidates are.  (O’Malley might actually not do that bad if most of the other names are unknowns.  At least a few folks will remember O’Malley from his campaign last year.)  So if you were to do this national polling to determine debate qualification right now, the results would seem pretty random, based in no small part on whose name sounds nice.

This is what's gonna make 2020 a tough race for Democrats. Their bench, as it stands, is severely lacking. A lot of people will point to Clinton in 92', Obama in 2008, etc. but the Democrats had 12 and 8 years of a GOP Presidency to field strong candidates in midterm years that swung against the GOP during their WH durations and created strong fields in 1992 and 2008.

Right now there isn't a strong field, and 2018 might see a strong backlash to the GOP but many candidates don't run after only two years in office.

I don't actually agree with your framing of it though.  I don't consider it a "weak bench" in the sense that it's filled with candidates who would struggle in a general election.  Many of these folks would do fine in a general election if they were actually nominated.  Name recognition is irrelevant in the general election, because if you actually manage to win a major party nomination, then everyone will know who you are.

This is contingent on many factors that we can't necessarily predict now. But the far reaching negative effects of a Trump or Pence administration will take years to be felt. Barack Obama left a fairly strong country in place when he left office, and the positive effects of his administration is what will be felt for the next few years.

OK?  I'm not sure what that has to do with what I was talking about.  If you're saying that we don't know exactly who is going to be a good candidate and who isn't, then I agree.  The solution to that is to have a primary race, and let them fight it out.  But what I'm saying is that otherwise good candidates might be winnowed out of the process too early because of the arbitrary whims of media oxygen, and arbitrary cutoffs in the number of candidates allowed at a debate.  At a certain level, that's true in every primary race, but it seems like things might go awry and otherwise "good" candidates might get left out if you have an enormous field of candidates and insist on winnowing people out just a month or two after the race gets started.

I don't necessarily agree with this. If you're unable set up a campaign operation that can draw media attention and work the Democratic Party nominating process to your advantage then your campaign is ultimately going to struggle in the general election. Media attention and working with people within the Party are both crucially important in setting your campaign up for success against your general election opponent and a candidate that cannot do at least one or both is dead on arrival in November.

[Shadows]

I predict - O'Malley, Castro, Kamala Harris & some random businessmen billionaire. The main-card will have 8-9 top people, Cuomo & a couple of governors & the usual suspects who people think will run !

[Mr. Morden]

The 2020 Democratic field doesn’t really look like that, at least going by the people who are 1) younger than 75 years old, and 2) dropping the most hints of interest.  Assume for a minute that Biden’s and Sanders’s ages prevent them from running, and that Al Franken sticks by his Shermanesque denial and also doesn’t run.  Who else is out there who would have >50% name recognition right now?  Warren and maybe Booker?  The average voter has no idea who Kirsten Gillibrand is, let alone Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, or Seth Moulton.  So if you were to take a national poll right now, and weren’t including Biden, Sanders, Clinton, or Oprah Winfrey, then what is the order of the remaining candidates?  Warren in front for sure, and then maybe Booker a distant second, and beyond that a crapshoot, because most people don’t know who these candidates are.  (O’Malley might actually not do that bad if most of the other names are unknowns.  At least a few folks will remember O’Malley from his campaign last year.)  So if you were to do this national polling to determine debate qualification right now, the results would seem pretty random, based in no small part on whose name sounds nice.

This is what's gonna make 2020 a tough race for Democrats. Their bench, as it stands, is severely lacking. A lot of people will point to Clinton in 92', Obama in 2008, etc. but the Democrats had 12 and 8 years of a GOP Presidency to field strong candidates in midterm years that swung against the GOP during their WH durations and created strong fields in 1992 and 2008.

Right now there isn't a strong field, and 2018 might see a strong backlash to the GOP but many candidates don't run after only two years in office.

I don't actually agree with your framing of it though.  I don't consider it a "weak bench" in the sense that it's filled with candidates who would struggle in a general election.  Many of these folks would do fine in a general election if they were actually nominated.  Name recognition is irrelevant in the general election, because if you actually manage to win a major party nomination, then everyone will know who you are.

This is contingent on many factors that we can't necessarily predict now. But the far reaching negative effects of a Trump or Pence administration will take years to be felt. Barack Obama left a fairly strong country in place when he left office, and the positive effects of his administration is what will be felt for the next few years.

OK?  I'm not sure what that has to do with what I was talking about.  If you're saying that we don't know exactly who is going to be a good candidate and who isn't, then I agree.  The solution to that is to have a primary race, and let them fight it out.  But what I'm saying is that otherwise good candidates might be winnowed out of the process too early because of the arbitrary whims of media oxygen, and arbitrary cutoffs in the number of candidates allowed at a debate.  At a certain level, that's true in every primary race, but it seems like things might go awry and otherwise "good" candidates might get left out if you have an enormous field of candidates and insist on winnowing people out just a month or two after the race gets started.

I don't necessarily agree with this. If you're unable set up a campaign operation that can draw media attention and work the Democratic Party nominating process to your advantage then your campaign is ultimately going to struggle in the general election. Media attention and working with people within the Party are both crucially important in setting your campaign up for success against your general election opponent and a candidate that cannot do at least one or both is dead on arrival in November.

Well, OK, I disagree with that.  I think much of what goes into determining who gets national media coverage (especially in the very early stages of a campaign, more than six months before anyone is voting in the primaries) is beyond the control of the candidates themselves.  Or to the extent that they do control it, it’s done in large part by saying or doing outrageous things.  Which certainly *could* be a skill that’s useful in a general election campaign, but it’s hardly the only thing that matters.

But what is your (or anyone else who wants to comment) take on how politicians manage to break through on the national stage and become well known well *before* they run for president?  E.g., how did Christie, Cruz, and Rubio do it last time around, and what does that say about which of the currently anonymous 2020 Dems is going to be able to break through and achieve respectable levels of name recognition within the next two years?

Is it by leading some big, controversial initiative in Congress (like forcing a government shutdown)?  Is it by being demographically interesting (Kamala Harris, while not well known nationally right now, could become more well known in two years if the media is fascinated by a female presidential candidate with her ethnic background)?  Is it by attracting enough donors to put up strong fundraising numbers in the first quarter of your campaign, so that the media takes you seriously?  Or something else entirely?

[Mr. Morden]

OK, I re-wrote the subject line of this thread, because I think this question of how candidates break through in media coverage is more interesting than the initial question I posed.

[NeederNodder]

Gabbard if Warren won't run.