Comparing the 2020 Democrats to the 2016 Republicans

Roughly two years ago, Canadian political commentators Lauren Southern and Faith Goldy released a video called “Canadian Politics for Americans,” which focused on the battle for the leadership of the Conservative Party.  In an effort to help their American audience, the duo compared every candidate for Conservative Party leadership to a 2016 Republican Presidential candidate.  Now, I have decided to do the same thing for all of the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates.  I have compared each Democratic candidate to a candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2016.  While many of these candidates have absolutely nothing in common ideology, they do share commonalities when it comes to their personalities and/or the situation they found themselves in prior to running for President.  My comparisons do not take race or gender into consideration at all.  In the interest of time and space, I will only come up with Republican equivalents for ten of the announced Democratic Presidential candidates.

Even though former Vice President Joe Biden has not announced his run for President yet, he finds himself in the same position that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush found himself in back in 2015.  They both thought it was “their turn.”  Bush held off eight years in the hopes that Americans would rally around him the same way Americans rallied around his brother eight years after their father, George H.W. Bush, lost his re-election bid. The same sort of applies to Biden.  Biden thought about running in 2016 after running two unsuccessful Presidential campaigns in 1988 and 2008.  Biden seems to see himself as a natural successor to President Obama, considering the fact that he served as his Vice President for eight years. Bush thought that in spite of his brother’s unpopularity when leaving office, Republicans would rally around him in 2016 because of their disgust with President Obama and their desire to pick someone with a successful track record (Bush served as Governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007.)  After all, no Republican Presidential candidate without a Bush on the ticket since 1972.  However, Bush found himself at odds with the Republican base, who wanted to head in a different direction than the “compassionate conservatism” Bush offered by declaring illegal immigration an “act of love.”  Bush failed to win a single primary.  While Biden leads most of the polls right now, so did Bush heading into the 2016 election season.

Chris Christie would have made a fantastic candidate for President in 2012.  He had just beaten an incumbent Democratic Governor in a very blue state three years earlier.  However, he ultimately decided not to run for re-election.  While he won re-election decisively in 2013, his approval ratings took a huge dive following the “Bridgegate” scandal and his embrace of President Obama following Hurricane Sandy, which took place six days before the 2012 Presidential Election.  Elizabeth Warren had everything in her favor in 2016 as a rising star in the Democratic Party.  She ultimately decided not to run because she wanted to pave the way for Hillary, like many Democrats.  Warren won re-election to the Senate in 2018 but has shot herself in the foot numerous times over the past year by taking a DNA test to prove she had Native American ancestry and creating a disastrous roll-out video. Chris Christie won zero primaries in 2016.  It looks like Elizabeth Warren will match his record.

Rick Santorum did very well in the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries because few other alternatives to frontrunner Mitt Romney existed.  He thought that as the second place finisher in the 2012 primaries, he would have a shot at the grand prize in 2016.  However, the field in 2016 was much, much larger and his voters had many other candidates to choose from.  The same applies to Bernie Sanders, who set himself up as the non-Hillary candidate in 2016. While many Democratic Presidential contenders have adopted Sanders’s ideology, that does not make Sanders an automatic favorite to win the Democratic nomination; after all, his voters have many younger, fresher options to choose from.

Ted Cruz announced his campaign for President of the United States just a little more than two years after winning his first election to the United States Senate.  He had an extensive legal background prior to his time in the Senate; he had previously served as Texas Attorney General.  He had prided himself as an ideological purist. Similarly, Kamala Harris won her first Senate election in 2016 following six years as California’s Attorney General; a position similar but not identitical to that of Solicitor General.  Both had the designation of “rising star” within their respective parties and did quite well in the intersectionality Olympics.  Ted Cruz’s father serves as a Baptist minister while Harris’s father holds the title of professor, a minister-like role in the Church of Liberalism. 

John Kasich became one of the last candidates to announce in the 2016 election cycle.  He had a fairly conservative voting record from his time in Congress and had just overwhelmingly won a second term as Governor in the swing state of Ohio.  Amy Klobuchar hails from Minnesota, which looks like it may play a crucial role in deciding who wins the 2020 Presidential Election. Klobuchar has won every one of her three Senate races by double digits, running well ahead of the three most recent Democratic Presidential candidates in the state and every other candidate who has run statewide in recent years.  She does have a largely liberal voting record, she has even expressed support for the Green New Deal, but her personality matches that of Kasich, who assured Republican voters eager to enforce America’s immigration laws that he would not deport the 11 million “law abiding” people living in the country illegally. During a CNN town hall, Klobuchar shot down the idea of free college for all; which did not exactly cause a standing ovation among the  Like Kasich, Klobuchar does come across as quite pragmatic in a field where all the passion tilts toward the candidates who have the big, bold ideas; which include free college.

Even though he had served as the Governor of New York for three terms, many Republicans did not know anything about Republican Governor George Pataki.  Those who did probably did not like his record that much; after all, he found himself at odds with the base of his party when it came to abortion.  Similarly, former Maryland Congressman John Delaney has extremely low name ID.  He announced his intention to run for President before anyone else in the field and has not improved his poll numbers at all.  While Delaney probably has more in common with the liberal base than Pataki does with the conservative base, his poll numbers seem unlikely to change; meaning that he will likely face the same fate as Pataki and drop out before the Iowa caucuses.

Carly Fiorina looked like she might have had what it takes to take down California Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010.  Republicans had a very good election night; they picked up several Senate seats and retook control of the House.  However, Fiorina lost by about 10 points.  Eight years later, many thought Beto O’Rourke could beat Texas Senator Ted Cruz in a year that many thought would turn out favorably for Democrats.  While Democrats did have a good year in 2018, at least when it came to the House, history repeated itself as O’Rourke failed to cross the finish line and win a Senate race in a state where his party identification does not match the partisan tilt of the state at large. O’Rourke came much closer to beating Cruz than Fiorina came to beating Boxer; that reflects the fact that California leans heavier towards the Democratic Party than Texas does towards the Republican Party. 

As the two-term governor of a state with an impressive conservative record, Bobby Jindal probably should have done better in the 2016 Republican primaries.  However, he became one of the first candidates to drop out; he exited the race two and a half months before the Iowa caucuses.  Likewise, Jay Inslee has an impressive record for those looking for an SJW virtue-signaller with both legislative and executive experience.  Inslee has served as Governor of Washington for two terms.  At this point, Washington has become about as blue as Louisiana is red.  Both Jindal and Inslee look like the victims of crowded primary fields where all of the other candidates suck up the oxygen.  Unless he secures the endorsements of Al Gore and Tom Steyer early on, the climate-change obsessed Inslee will likely meet the same fate as Jindal.

Scott Walker had quite an impressive personal story. He became Governor of Wisconsin in 2010 and began implementing sweeping reforms in his state.  His dynamic conservative agenda led to him facing a recall, which he ultimately survived.  He won a tough race for re-election in 2014 and launched his Presidential bid not longer after his re-election victory.  He seemed like an ideal candidate, always contrasting the “Wisconsin Way” favorably with the “Washington Way” and the fact that he hailed from the Midwest looked helpful as the Republicans sought to put together a path to 270.  In 2020, the Democrats face similar challenges in putting together a path to 270.  As for winning the Midwest, they feel like they have found their man in the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg. 

Both John Hickenlooper and Mike Huckabee served as Governors of states undergoing ideological revolutions.  Mike Huckabee served as Governor of Arkansas at a time when Arkansas ended up in the Democratic column in Presidential elections more often than not.  Native son Bill Clinton had just become President and Democrats held both Senate seats. Huckabee won a full term as governor in 1998, following his ascension to the governorship as the result of Democratic Governor and former Lieutenant Governor Jim Guy Tucker’s resignation.  By then, Arkansas had one Republican Senator; who ended up losing re-election in 2002.  Arkansas underwent a rapid transformation from a blue state to a red state; first by voting Republican in the 2000 Presidential election and ousting its two Democratic Senators; Blanche Lincoln in 2010 and Mark Pryor in 2014.  By 2012, Republicans held all four of Arkansas’s seats in the House of Representatives.  Since 2015, Republicans have controlled every statewide elected office as well as the state legislature. While Colorado voted Republican in all but one election from 1968 to 2004, it typically had at least one Democratic Senator.  Colorado has voted Democratic in every Presidential election since 2008 and it appears to have become a Democratic-leaning swing state.  In the 2018 elections, Democrats swept every single statewide office and won control of both houses of the legislature.  The Democrats have won the last four gubernatorial elections; with Hickenlooper as the winner in two of the last four.  Both men have often found themselves at odds with the wishes of their respective party establishments; Huckabee because of his strong support for social conservatism in a party that wanted to “move on” from gay marriage in light of the Supreme Court decision and Hickenlooper because of his positions on marijuana and female running mates.