The GOP candidates for president ran in fairly clear ideological lanes during the 2012 and 2016 primaries. Mitt Romney and Donald Trump benefited from the absence of meaningful competition within their respective lanes. If you’re puzzled as to why the Republicans nominated a white bread conservative in 2012 and a raving nationalist in 2016, you need look no further than that.
The Democratic race in 2020 will be more complex than that. There are two major schisms within the party: realo vs. fundi (i.e., do you promise the moon and the stars or just the moon?); and identity vs. class. How do the likely candidates stack up? Some of them are not perfectly defined at this point, but here are the ones we know:
- Joe Biden: Realo/class.
- Bernie Sanders: Fundi/class.
- Elizabeth Warren: Realo/identity.
- Cory Booker: Realo/identity.
Harris definitely falls on the identity side, and I’m guessing she’s a fundi, but that remains to be seen.
Obama and Clinton were realo/identity. I suspect that’s where the sweet spot can be found, but it will depend to some extent, as it did with the GOP in 2016 and 2012, on the number and strength of the competitors within each group.