Ready The Clown Car: The First Batch of Democrats Are Ready To Announce Their 2020 Bids

One might think you would be more of a supporter of Kamala Harris.

 

Do you really believe that Beta O'Rourke has the best chance of beating Trump?

 

President Trump commented on Senator Kamala Harris behavior during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for AG Barr yesterday as "Nasty".

He is right. It was. Her behavior has a tendency to be "Nasty". Don't be surprised to see President Trump and others continue to call attention to this very unattractive tendency using this same term more often going forward.

 

The Democrats running for president are preparing for a contested convention by courting superdelegates. This is important, because if a nominee is not chosen on the first ballot, then the Democrat superdelegates will represent about 24% of all delegates starting with the second ballot:

Democratic Candidates Are Preparing For A Contested Convention — By Courting Superdelegates​

The story is at the link. It talks about how all the candidates are already hustling around trying to schmooze the superdelegates for their support, because there is a very strong chance that this convention will be contested (going beyond the first ballot) with the field being as fragmented as it is. The candidates all realize that with the Democrat party elites controlling 24% of the delegates, it is not just up to the voters by any means.

Here is some more about the Democrat's delegate allocation rules for their primaries:

Thresholds for Democratic Party Delegate Allocation

There is a 15% minimum threshold to receive any delegates. Those not receiving the minimum are excluded, with the delegate pool divided proportionately among those candidates receiving 15% or more.

Implications for 2020
The Democratic nominating contest in 2016 was essentially between two candidates - Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The 2020 field is starting out much larger. Even if a few withdraw later this year, there will likely be 10+ candidates in the race when the Iowa caucuses kick off the nominating process on February 3rd. Given the more front-loaded 2020 calendar, this larger group is likely to be around for more events than would otherwise be the case.

The biggest potential implication of proportional allocation in such a large field is that no candidate arrives at the Milwaukee convention in July with enough delegates to win -- and a brokered convention results.

However, there are a couple issues at the state level that could also arise in these large field 2020 contests that weren't really mathematically possible in the two-person 2016 race

1. No candidate receives 15% of the vote. If no candidate meets the 15% threshold, Democratic Party rules state the minimum to receive delegates will be 50% of the vote received by the front-runner. For example, if candidate A wins with 10% of the vote, delegates will be allocated proportionately to anyone that receives 5% or more.
2. Only one candidate exceeds 15% of the vote -- but just barely. If only one candidate gets 15%, the allocation is effectively winner-take-all. This is not a big deal if that person is the clear frontrunner, getting 40%, 50% or more. However, what if the opposite is true -- a candidate wins with 16% vote share, while the next three candidates are just a few points behind. If that happened repeatedly favoring the same candidate, the party could potentially end up with a nominee that lacks broad support.

​

So, candidates in individual primary contests that win less than 15% of the vote in that state get zero delegates, unless no candidate wins 15% of the delegates in that state, in which case there are special rules. With this many candidates, it is going to be hard for more than one or two candidates, three at the most to win delegates. Actually that may be true later as well.

There are 3,768 elected delegates and 764 superdelegates available, for a total of 4,532. For a candidate to win the nomination for the Democrats on the first ballot, they will need to accumulate 1,884 (3,768/2) delegates from the primaries alone. Starting on the second ballot, the winning candidate will need 2,226 delegates (4,532/2), which includes the superdelegates.

And if that happens, it will be a return to the smoke-filled rooms of old.

 

Also, Montana Governor Steve Bullock is poised to announce within the next two weeks:

Montana governor Steve Bullock to announce bid for presidency

They are going to have to build bleachers on stage just to get all the debate contestants up there at the same time.