Are Democrats setting a trap for themselves in 2020? The conventional wisdom is that they must reconnect with the heartland in order to capture an Electoral College victory in the next presidential election. So what does hard-left Democratic stronghold California do? It moves up its primary from June to March 3, Super Tuesday, in order to put even more emphasis on the narrow blue coastal corridors.
“Candidates will not be able to ignore the largest, most diverse state in the nation,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said when the shift was made.[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”24″]Is that a recipe for baking an entrenched politician or what?[/perfectpullquote]
Lost in that statement is the fact that Democratic candidates will now be unable to avoid the need to have piles of cash to compete in the Golden State and to declare shrill progressive principles in order to placate the leftists that reside there. Thus the way is paved for a big-money establishment figure espousing radical views to secure the party’s nomination: a worst case scenario for Dems. Think an even more left-leaning Hillary Clinton. That should go over swell in Trump Country.
Bring Cash, Turn Left
“We should expect a bifurcation between the candidates who are well-financed and well-organized and who are gaming out the early vote and those who cannot,” Josh Putnam, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, told NBC News.
Is that a recipe for baking an entrenched politician or what?
And isn’t that too bad for grassroots Democrats who are demanding a generational handover from the aging dinosaurs who have dominated party politics in recent years. “We have to look for the Barack Obama scenario for the party,” Bryce Smith, a 26-year-old Iowa Democratic official told The Wall Street Journal. “I can’t see how my generation, 18- to 34-year-olds, can get excited about a 70-year-old candidate ever again.”
By moving big-ticket California up in the schedule, however, the older candidates with established name recognition and, more importantly, established financial war chests, gain a huge advantage over any would-be surprise candidates.
“The amount of money you’re going to need to be competitive in California is just going to knock so many people out before it begins,” James Demers, who served as co-chairman of former President Obama’s campaign in New Hampshire, told Reuters. “It feels like the day and age of using Iowa and New Hampshire to get a campaign started are over.”
Stumbling Block
No matter how this eventually plays out, California moving up its primary hurts the party. An outsider, generational-change candidate will find it harder to pay the freight, and a progressive candidate will have all their most divisive talking points accentuated by rabid leftist amen choirs. Meanwhile, any successful moderate candidate will be forced to pivot left while campaigning in the state, which will allow Republicans to come up with a catalog of unwanted sound bytes to play back to mainstream voters across the country in the general election at their leisure.
The move probably most helps a candidate like former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. He has tried to position himself as a centrist candidate and, of course, he easily has the money to win California. He is more than comfortable with taking leftist positions on issues such as gun control. But at age 76 and presumably seeking to duck an overtly progressive label, can his money overcome the hard-left purity spiraling of voters on the West Coast?
Most frightening of all for Dems who hope for a realistic chance to win the White House in 2020 would be the emergence of a stridently leftist candidate backed by billionaire progressive money, as we saw in the Florida and Georgia gubernatorial races this year. Outright radicals Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams surprisingly won party primaries due to heavy financial backing from the likes of Tom Steyer and George Soros, and then narrowly missed winning office in November. But a candidate of that stripe would be utterly destroyed under the Electoral College, most likely being shut out completely in the heartland states. They would, however, be welcomed with open arms in California in early March.
Democrats urgently need ideas and moderation if they are to capture the White House. Thanks to California moving up its primary, the emphasis now will be even more on money and ideology. It seems a bad trap to fall into, yet here they are.
