2005-03-02

2020 Presidential Election

2017

2017-02-06-Politico-donald-trump-2020-democrats
Trump sets Democratic field ablaze with anger
The price of entry for the 2020 presidential primary is ferocious opposition to the president.
By Gabriel Debenedetti
Politico, 2017-02-06

The Democratic base is so roiled and enraged
after only two weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency
that a take-no-prisoners posture toward the White House is emerging as
the price of entry for the 2020 primary.

An election that could have focused on
economic inequality and the excesses of Wall Street —
the issues that animate the left’s leading tribunes,
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren —
is already shaping up as a contest about
the intensity of the resistance to Trump.

The urgency of the moment is not lost on the party’s leading 2020 hopefuls.
Many of them — including Warren and fellow Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris —
[not a heterosexual Gentile white male among them]
abandoned their schedules two weekends ago to appear at protests in their home states or in Washington,
grasping the imperative to be both public and distinctive in their opposition to Trump’s executive order on refugee travel. ...

“People will say,
‘Where were you when he appointed Jeff Sessions?
Where were you when he picked a Supreme Court justice?’
That will be a real question in primaries,
and I wouldn’t want to be the candidate on the wrong side of that,”
said longtime strategist Bob Shrum, warning of the importance of public resistance
in a week when Democratic senators began boycotting votes on Trump picks altogether.

Leading Democratic strategists warn that the first signs will appear in midterm elections,
in which the primary electorate will demand more than just
marching outside the White House or grabbing a bullhorn at an arrivals lounge.
They’ll be expecting something close to 100 percent rejection of Trump’s agenda —
making the coming years complicated for members of Congress,
who have to vote on it, rather than the governors and mayors
who get to assume a more offensive posture.

...

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