From Ted Rall Website
First: No. It's not too early to discuss the 2020 election. The Iowa caucuses are only a year and a half away. Any presidential hopeful who hasn't begun chatting up donors by now will find it nearly impossible to mount a viable campaign.
At this point insert the usual caveats that anything can happen, no knows anything, scandals happen, politicians get sick, a year is an eternity in politics.
Let's speculate!
On the Right: Donald Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee.
Impeachment? Republicans are knee-jerk loyal AF, so Democrats would have to initiate proceedings. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says impeachment "is not somewhere I think we should go." Also, note the word "Minority." Democrats can't do jack without taking back the House -- far from a sure thing.
A serious Republican primary challenge? Most incumbent Republican presidents have nothing to worry about there but Donald Trump is not most presidents. You can imagine a right-wing version of Ted Kennedy's devastating 1980 challenge to Jimmy Carter.
The GOP doesn't have superdelegates so it's harder for the RNC to fix the race the way Democrats did for Clinton in 2016. Still, I don't think a serious (as opposed to symbolic) challenge will materialize from the three currently most-talked-abouts. Jeff Flake can't raise enough dough. (Trump, on the other hand, already has a whopping $88 million.) Mitt Romney could self-fund but seems too bogged down in Utah's primary race for Senate to have time to pivot for another presidential run in 2020. Ohio governor John Kasich is beloved by the Beltway media but not GOP primary voters. I could be wrong. But my political instincts say Trump will coast to renomination without a significant primary challenger.
On the Left: The Democratic nomination belongs to Bernie Sanders. If he wants it.
Neither the centrist-controlled Democratic National Committee nor its official mouthpiece the New York Times have learned anything from the debacle of 2016, when guaranteed-to-win Hillary Clinton lost to Trump because she and the party snubbed Bernie Sanders and the progressive wing of the party he represents. These days, they're floating Elizabeth Warren.
Until 2016 progressives saw Warren as a Bernie alternative but then she lost her leftie street cred by endorsing and supporting Clinton.
"On her Western swing, Ms. Warren sought to strike a unifying chord. At a tapas restaurant in Salt Lake City, she said Democrats had to close ranks in 2018 in order to recapture the White House. "Perhaps most appealing to Democratic leaders," wrote the Times, "Ms. Warren might please their activist base while staving off a candidate they fear would lose the general election. A candidate such as Mr. Sanders."
Throughout the campaign, polls showed that Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump.
My gut tells me Warren doesn't really want to run. If she does, she'll have charisma problems. As Boston magazine pointed out last year, even the people of Massachusetts aren't much into her. (Bernie Sanders has the highest home-state approval rating of any U.S. senator, 75%.)
Given a choice between Sanders and Warren, progressives will choose the reliable progressive over the accommodationist pragmatist. That said, Warren would make a fine veep option.
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