For reference, then, before we dive into our updated "State of the White House" list, let's take a glance at who is most likely to make it into the third debate; for reference a candidate must achieve at least 2% in four non-partisan national polls and receive 130,000 individual donations. With Amy Klobuchar's campaign announcing this past Friday that she has made the donor cutoff (she'd already hit the polling cutoff), we are now up to eight people on the stage for the September debates, with 27 days to go: Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, & Beto O'Rourke. Two candidates appear very close: Julian Castro & Andrew Yang both have hit the donor threshold and are one national poll shy of hitting the field. After that you have three candidates who have gotten to at least one poll: Tom Steyer with two, and Tulsi Gabbard/John Hickenlooper with one (Gabbard has also hit the donor threshold). If there aren't more-than-ten candidates, the debates will all be in one night, and probably be a death knell to anyone who isn't on the stage, so keep an eye on Steyer & Gabbard in particular-they seem like the candidates who could have enough of a pocket in the polls to get to the 11th position. Castro & Yang will probably be able to pull this off since they're so close. About the only candidates who seem to have had big enough debate moments to maybe turn their campaigns around a bit other than these 13 are Marianne Williamson (who had the most viral moments during the debate, even if that's not necessarily a good thing) and Jay Inslee (whose climate change platform & position as a sitting governor could attract fans if he gets any press time).
With that established, let's dive into the top ten. As a reminder, the #1 is the candidate I think is most likely to win the nomination, not whom I am voting for or who I think is the best candidate to beat Trump in 2020. The previous rankings are from our last article, which was before both of the debates, so there's definitely been a lot of room for movement on this list, but as you can see-movement seems to be a pretty hot commodity few can afford in this race.
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| Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) |
I toyed with putting Yang or Williamson in this spot (I think Gabbard has the best shot at being the 11th in the debate, but I'm not going to pretend she has a chance of actually winning this race; she seems to be running for...I don't get that campaign strategy at all unless she's running for a cabinet position in Trump's second term). Both candidates have a niche that is clearly attractive to some voters (Yang on Reddit, Williamson on Twitter), but Democrats appear reluctant to go with celebrity candidates, or at least celebrity candidates that don't have a political office to make them reputable. As a result, I think Inslee is probably the best 10th position because his campaign is the most attractive to rank-and-file Democrats, and has just struggled to gain traction. His climate change crusade and long public career (not only as governor, but as a principled House member who once lost his seat in order to pass a gun control law) make him an intriguing candidate who might be able to stand out in a smaller field, but if he can't get into the third debate, it's hard to see where this goes other than Secretary of Interior. (Previous Ranking: N/A)
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| Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) |
Klobuchar's unfortunate kickoff to her campaign is largely forgotten (the allegations of staff abuse), but honestly that feels more because she's not seen as a serious threat to the nomination than because those allegations didn't have teeth. Klobuchar is the sort of "Martin O'Malley"-style candidate who is running a respectable enough campaign that she keeps qualifying for the debates (her stature as a very popular senator in a pretty evenly-split state also helps with fundraising), but she also hasn't found a way to gain a foothold in the race. In many ways, she's losing more from Joe Biden than anyone else. She's a left-of-middle candidate in a race that everyone who would consider her electability and folksy approach already has a candidate who gives them stars in their eyes by looking at Ohio polling numbers. It's probable that she was once running for vice president, but it's difficult to see even that happening at this point if she can't land a bigger impression in this race. Still, making the third debate already proves she should be on this list somewhere. (Previous Ranking: 9)
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| Sec. Julian Castro (D-TX) |
Castro, unlike Klobuchar, has not made the third debate yet, but he likely will before the month is over. He had a solid performance in the first debates, to the point where Elizabeth Warren probably has him in her Top 3 already for the VP slot, but like Klobuchar he's stuck in the middle; a respectable candidate that has government experience & would be a reasonable nominee, he just doesn't seem to be gaining any sort of foothold with either voters or the press. Castro is the only Latino in the race, something that should at least be acknowledged considering how important Latino voters will be in 2020 for the Democrats, particularly in Arizona & Florida, but it's not clear if him being Latino will translate to any Latino support in the primaries, particularly considering that Iowa & New Hampshire are two of the least diverse states in the country. He's going to need to find some sort of key to win attention in the race if he's ever going to make it to the Top 5. (Previous Ranking: 7)
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| Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) |
No one in this lineup has fallen harder than Beto O'Rourke (save perhaps Kirsten Gillibrand, who I took off this list at this point because it ain't happening). O'Rourke looked like a great compromise candidate for people who were alternating between the pragmatic Biden and the liberal Bernie, but he hasn't caught fire in the race, and it's hard to see how he would now that his campaign has a bit of a stench of lackluster to it. Like Klobuchar, he's probably going to continue to qualify for debates for a while because he's so well-known nationally and has an enviable donor base, but what does that even matter if he's not coming close to the presidency, and with Buttigeg still doing extremely well with fundraising, it's hard to make the argument that Beto would be the better running-mate for a Harris or Warren. It's pretty clear, looking at his still sky-high approval ratings in Texas (polling shows him beating Trump in the state) that he made an understandable-but-foolish error in assuming the race to the presidential nomination was an easier one than the race to beat John Cornyn in Texas. It's doubtful he'll do it with him already in the next debate, but if the 46-year-old O'Rourke wants to eventually be president, it's going to be by switching to the Senate race in Texas & besting Cornyn (which would instantly put him on the top of every list in 2024 or 2028), rather than by getting a miracle here. (Previous Ranking: 6)
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| Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) |
The next two men on this list I don't really know what to do with at this point. In years past we'd be talking about how Slots #5-8 are probably running for VP at this point, but we will almost certainly have some sort of parity of race, geography, and gender, which puts someone like Cory Booker at a disadvantage, as he shares at least one of those traits with the three frontrunners on this list. So it's probable Booker is running for fame, and potentially to give himself a leg-up in future contests (he's only 50). Booker's nice guy plan hasn't really worked (it got scooped in some capacity by Buttigieg & Warren), and his views on education probably precluded him from ever being considered a proper progressive. In many ways I wonder if he and Klobuchar being on the stage is more about seeing how many great leader in the Senate the Democrats have, as a President Harris or President Warren will need Booker & Klobuchar to be holding gavels come January 2021 if they want any of their agenda to be enacted. I don't see a way at this point for Booker to actually become the next president, however, unless he's the nominee in 2024 after a 2020 loss. (Previous Ranking: 8)
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| Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-IN) |
Buttigieg is in an unusual position in this list. Unlike, say, the five people listed in slots 6-10, he has the fundraising numbers of someone who should be considered a leading candidate for president. His poll numbers, though, are above the likes of Booker & Klobuchar, but they aren't impressive enough to really qualify in a "this could be the next president" sort of way. And, as I mentioned above, it's doubtful that the presidential running-mate this year is going to be a white man, unless Kamala Harris is the nominee. So Buttigieg is in a strange position where he'd almost certainly make any VP slot list in a previous cycle (in many ways he reminds me of John Edwards in 2004, running to be the likely running-mate of whomever actually wins the nomination), but where he's too strong in the race for anyone to say with a straight face that he should get out of the race. Compounded on that is that Buttigieg is a Democrat in a very red state, one where he's unlikely to advance to higher office like governor or senator (or even the US House, which would be a step down at this point in terms of celebrity). Buttigieg's best bet would be if Harris were to win the nod, and he'd get the nomination, but that's betting on a candidate who has also had a struggle between her fundraising and her poll numbers. Perhaps he ends up in a cabinet position like HUD or Veterans Affairs? (Previous Ranking: 5)
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| Sen. Bernie Sanders (D/I-VT) |
One of the biggest question marks I had when I put Bernie Sanders on this list at #1 during our last writeup was whether or not Sanders himself could possibly lose his supporters, either to Biden or Warren. The "Bernie Bros" seemed impenetrable (they didn't, obviously, really like moving to Hillary Clinton in 2016), but either this race seems to have mellowed them or they genuinely were movable (just not be Hillary), but they clearly are willing to explore other candidacies. Bernie Sanders is moving down three slots, and while he's still in the section of the list of "people who might actually win the nomination," I kind of wonder if he's even out of that race, running some different kind of contest similar to Buttigieg, where his political ambition is there, even though he knows he's not going to be president (considering how long he ran in the 2016 race without a shot at the win, though, Sanders might be the last to know on that front). He'd need to go after Elizabeth Warren in a harder way than he has previously, and his second debate performance indicates he won't do that or doesn't have a strategy to go after his toughest competitor in the race. Sanders seems to wish he was in a head-to-head with Biden (or Clinton again), but that's not the case and if he's not careful he's going to be an afterthought by the time voting happens, not even relevant enough to influence the platform or get a plum convention slot. (Previous Ranking: 1)
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| Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) |
Harris is the candidate in this race that's the hardest to track. During my first countdown of candidates in January, she was #1 and has never left the Top 3 for a few reasons-she's the most prominent African-American candidate in the race, she's a progressive but a progressive who could probably get away with calling themselves a moderate in the general election, and is arguably the best debater of the entire slate when she's on her game. In many ways, she reminded me of Obama in 2008, going after the longtime Democrat in the field (Clinton for Obama, Biden for Harris) in hopes of being the young upstart. The problem here is that A) Harris can't seem to sustain a real bounce in the polls, frequently coming behind Sanders & more in the Buttigieg camp and B) Clinton/Obama didn't have an Elizabeth Warren figure in the race, as John Edwards was strong but never strong enough to take on Clinton/Obama in the long haul. Harris needs to find a way to not just go after Biden voters, but also to take on Warren voters and start becoming the person who scoops up the 1-2% of voters that are going for a John Hickenlooper or Jay Inslee as those candidates inevitably drop out. So far Harris has not shown a great tenacity or ability to do that, and that's what's going to stop her from winning this race in the long haul-there's really only room for at best three frontrunners in a primary, and unless she can take out one of the polling leaders of Sanders/Warren/Biden, she's not going to be the actual nominee even if she'll consistently be in the upper echelons of candidates. (Previous Ranking: 3)
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| Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) |
I toyed with putting Warren in #1, as she probably has the most momentum of any candidate in the race, and is running the best campaign so far (no qualifiers-Warren is dominating this race). Warren has done the seemingly impossible, winning over Sanders supporters without having to actually attack Sanders, and really only going after either someone like Joe Biden (tacitly or otherwise) or punching down to fight against "Donald Trump surrogates" in the race like John Delaney. Look at the way she was able to score some really easy points off of the former Maryland congressman in the CNN debate, mostly because the moderators were caring more about ratings or substance than the actual race at hand (that Warren didn't have to actually go after Sanders because the moderators weren't willing to put them against each other with something like gun control in a way that would have forced them to differentiate shows the network that is desperate for ratings has no concept of how to handle a non-Trump political conversation). The biggest things holding me back from putting Warren #1 are-will she actually win over any Biden voters (and she's gonna need some of them) with someone like Harris as an option for people who would go for Biden were it not for his age, and just how much of Sanders' support can she continue to mine before Sanders is forced to go after her, starting a progressive war? I don't have an answer for these questions yet, and really no one does, but it's that hesitation that's keeping me from putting Warren #1, but make no mistake-there's a very real chance that she's the next Democratic nominee. (Previous Ranking: 4)
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| Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) |
I hadn't put Joe Biden at #1 yet mostly because I had no idea if his poll numbers were just driven by being the best-known name in the room or whether they were genuine. It seems, the further we get into these debates, that they are at least partially the latter. Biden has a real pull in this race, perhaps in part due to his "nice guy" persona, perhaps in part due to his obvious ties to the still-beloved former President Obama, and perhaps in part because he's a moderate white guy in a primary that, despite what your Twitter feed may say, is going to have a lot of moderate white guys voting. Biden's debate performances have been at best okay, and he's not running the strongest campaign in this contest, but that might not matter. I keep talking about (in reference to Biden) whether or not he's Hillary in 2016 or Jeb in 2016, the former a candidate that was going to win the nomination no matter what happened and the latter a candidate whose strong polling lead (before Trump, Jeb led in polls) was built on a house of sand once an unstoppable force joined the race. The problem with this analogy is that Jeb Bush probably would have been the nominee in 2016 were it not for a candidate-out-of-nowhere like Trump who was willing to attack him in a way that no one else found appropriate or would have been willing to risk attacking the brother & son of former presidents (people like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, & John Kasich had something to lose in political future that Trump simply didn't). Warren certainly won't go after Biden with the same level of vitriol, but Harris, for example, going after Biden in a pretty personal way didn't actually leave her with much more than some extra fundraising (there was no sustained bump in the polls). It's worth considering that Biden is Hillary in 2016-for all of the song-an-dance, there's no one in the race who might actually beat him. (Previous Ranking: 2)
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