Winners & Losers in the Presidential Primary

I'm not going to apologize for disappearing for the week.  I normally would, provide an excuse for why I missed a couple of deadlines & went nearly a week without an article, but, honestly this week was hell for all of us, and I suspect it may have been even worse for some of you, so I'm going to collectively say "I'll write as often as I feel I can muster while still respecting my need to digest & process & keep my mental/physical health in check, and I hope you and your loved ones are staying safe & healthy during this ordeal."  Maybe soon I'll share more thoughts on what this is like for me personally, but for now I'll just leave it with that, and move into a giant article that will kick me back into blogging.

We have, for all intents and purposes, reached the end of the Democratic presidential primary in the past week.  With Tulsi Gabbard dropping out and endorsing Joe Biden this week, there are still two candidates running in the presidential primary (Joe Biden & Bernie Sanders), but the math does not favor Bernie Sanders at all.  It, in fact, appears mathematically impossible for Sanders to be able to win the remaining states (whenever they decide to conduct their elections) by a large enough margin that he would even be able to have a contested convention, much less get a majority.  While Sanders seems to be struggling with how his second failed campaign for president ended, his chances of being the nominee in 2020 are absolutely null.

So it's time, then, for us to take a look at the candidates from this race and where they ended up.  There has been an adage in recent years that "you have nothing to lose from running for president," but that has proven patently false.  I think there's a lot you can lose.  Look at 2016 and the Republican Primaries-Marco Rubio & Ted Cruz went from being major players in the Republican Party, theoretical future presidents, to people that no one seriously lists as threats for the nomination in 2024.  A bad performance, a bad run, can put you in a position that could hurt your national prospects forever.  Admittedly, determining whose careers were forever hurt or not from a presidential campaign is a difficult science-few would have observed Joe Biden's campaigns in 1988 & 2008 and said "there's a future president," and yet now that seems increasingly plausible.  But we're going to try anyway.

Listed below are pretty much every major candidate that ran for president in the Democratic primaries in 2020.  I have sorted them out into Winners, Losers, and "Undecided," for those candidates who I can't tell if they did better or worse as a result of this race.  Essentially the winners are the people who now have a more vital role to play in the national conversation.  They have a better shot at either the presidency in the future or another high office, they are now a bigger deal in the Democratic Party than they were before.  The opposite is true for the "Losers."  These are people whose career prospects have diminished; they may still be powerful, but they are not better off for having run.  Essentially, Schrodinger's election says they would have been better off staying in the box.  And finally, the "Undecided's" I can't tell if they're better off.  Their careers have enough wiggle room from their runs that they could theoretically get into a higher office (potentially even the White House), or this could be the end of the road, they've reached their peak-it's hard to say.  Hopefully you're following this logic-if not, keep reading & you'll catch on.

Winners

Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE)

Joe Biden: Joe Biden is clearly the winner.  Like, he's the one who actually won the election.  But perhaps more importantly, Joe Biden did something in 2020 that he couldn't do in 1988, 2008, or 2016-he became the Democratic nominee.  While Biden remained the frontrunner throughout the fall, it seemed for at least a while there that he would falter, potentially to Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg or Elizabeth Warren, but there was a time where Biden was clearly left for dead. His resurgence in South Carolina, followed by him cementing that resurgence on Super Tuesday, got him to be the Democratic nominee, something he's been trying to do his whole life.  It remains to be seen whether Biden can do something no person has done since 1992 (defeat a sitting incumbent president), but Biden has now graduated from a historical footnote to someone who might become one of just 46 figures in American history.  Any way you look at it, he definitely gained from this election.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-IN)

Pete Buttigieg: At the beginning of this race, Pete Buttigieg was a small-town mayor with a hard-to-pronounce name whose biggest claim-to-fame was doing all right in a race to head the DNC.  By the end of it, he'd won the Iowa caucuses (as far as history is concerned), and had become such a major political player at the age of 38 that his endorsement was a significant part of elevating Joe Biden to the nomination.  Buttigieg's path forward is slightly unclear-he is from a red state (Indiana) with little chance of moving up, but if he was smart (and he is) he likely secured a spot in a Biden cabinet or as the next chairman of the DNC.  He also now has a national platform that he could use for a future presidential run.

Andrew Yang (D-NY)

Andrew Yang: The name of the game for the people who aren't Biden is "are they better off as a result of running their race?"  In the case of Andrew Yang, that's indisputable.  Yang had virtually no national presence before this, and ended the presidential race with the #YangGang behind him.  The left is bereft of "talking head influencers" (I don't mean this in a pejorative sense) who don't hold public office, and Yang now has the opportunity to become one of the few.  He can parlay this into a television show, book tour, or a persistent speaking circuit tour...or possibly a run for governor in his home state of New York.  This would have been unthinkable without this campaign.

Sec. Julian Castro (D-TX)

Julian Castro: Castro is on the top half of this list where most people of his ilk (candidates who could have conceivably been the nominee based on their resumé, but weren't) are not for a couple of reasons.  First, he ran a great campaign, one that got him further than you'd normally accept from someone whose last position was HUD Secretary (not a traditional presidential jumping off point).  More importantly, he rose at the exact right time in a state that is looking increasingly plausible for Democrats.  Castro is only 45, and one of the most prominent Democrats in Texas after this race, with no real losses under-his-belt (his quick endorsement of Elizabeth Warren kind of got rid of the air-of-disappointment that followed some of his other peers that got out of the race, making it look like he was getting out more to help a frontrunner than because his chances had dried up).  That berth should get him rite-of-first-refusal in either the governor's race in 2022 or the Senate race in 2024, both of which could be achievable in an increasingly purple-curious state.  And from those positions, a second presidential race isn't out-of-the-question.  After all, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden all had primary losses before they eventually won the nomination.

Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA)

Jay Inslee: Unlike Buttigieg, Castro, & Yang, I don't see Jay Inslee getting to a higher office.  Yes, he'll have his pick of any cabinet post he wants (though I kind of think he won't want it and will stay Governor of Washington), but Inslee did gain a national platform and a national identity this year that will be useful going forward.  In an era where senators are all we seem to care about in national conversation, Inslee forged a path as the leading voice on climate change, becoming synonymous with the issue.  This is an issue that will be a critical component of a first 100 Days of Biden's presidency, and as such, Inslee's voice will be sought after & heard.  Plus, he's near-certain now to avoid any serious challenge for a third term as governor, so he'll be speaking as a major US office-holder, always a plus.

Govs. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) and Steve Bullock (D-MT)

John Hickenlooper/Steve Bullock: Only one person gets to be the nominee, but that doesn't mean that only one person gets to win an office out of a presidential race.  John Hickenlooper & Steve Bullock were long-shot bids for the presidency, but they could end up major winners if they win Senate seats this November.  Both look good in polling (Hickenlooper consistently leads Cory Gardner, Bullock is tied with Steve Daines in the latest poll of his state), and would be coming into the Senate in an incredible position of power, since their wins would get the Democrats closer to a majority.  A majority where the margin is maybe 1 or 2 senators is going to let moderates like Hickenlooper & Bullock demand pretty much whatever they want in a bill, putting them in the company of the likes of Joe Manchin & Kyrsten Sinema as some of DC's most powerful figures.  Not bad for people that were basically asterisks in the actual primary.

Marianne Williamson (D-TX)

Marianne Williamson: I don't like it either, but there's no denying that Marianne Williamson gained as a result of her run for president.  A self-help guru was able to not only run, but she was able to get on the same debate stage as Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, & Elizabeth Warren.  She got a huge national audience (twice), and now has considerably more followers & people in her movement than she did before.  No, she'll likely never hold elective office in the United States, but that wasn't really the point here-Williamson wanted celebrity, a voice on cable news as someone associated with a major political party, and a book deal or self-help show.  It seems difficult to imagine she hasn't just gained all three.

Losers

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Bernie Sanders: Sanders is technically still running for president, though he's mathematically lost the race, and in reality, he lost more than that.  Sanders was one of the few candidates running who not only looked like a serious contender at the start of the race, but looked like one toward the end.  One could make a sincere argument that on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, he was the Democratic frontrunner, and stayed that way through the days following his victory in Nevada.  Some serious unforced errors (the 60 Minutes interview is going to be cited as one of the most consequential of the campaign, as was his badly-misjudged attacks on the Democratic establishment right after the Nevada caucuses which was the exact opposite direction he should have been taking at the time) cost him momentum, and it turned out, the nomination.  Bernie Sanders is too old to have another shot at the presidency.  Even if Biden loses in 2020, he'll be in his mid-80's and a recent two-time loser in 2024.  He'll still be a senator, perhaps even a Budget Chairman, but he dropped the bag in a big way, and sacrificed his one chance to become president in the process.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg (D-NY)

Mike Bloomberg: It's entirely possible Mike Bloomberg was a winner this year.  After all, he essentially ran so that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders wouldn't be the nominee-that happened.  He got a candidate who has a decent chance of defeating Donald Trump, and got some potshots in against the incumbent-that might have been all he was trying to do this year.  But for a man who spent a billion dollars, there was briefly a time where Bloomberg looked like he might be a dark horse nominee for POTUS.  Between Nevada & South Carolina, the lowest point for the Biden campaign, Bloomberg was at one point a real threat for the nomination, and national polling showed he could take it.  But then he had his ass handed to him by Elizabeth Warren, and was made a fool on national television.  He still has more money than some countries, but if his goal was to maybe be president, his unorthodox campaign just missed out on that being plausible, and that has to sting for a man who will never be in such a position again.

Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX)

Beto O'Rourke: Beto O'Rourke also is unlikely to ever be president, but unlike Bloomberg & Sanders, it has little to do with age (he's only 47).  O'Rourke took a gamble that he was, in fact, a once-in-a-generation style figure like John F. Kennedy or Barack Obama, someone who could come off a major campaign, and then parlay that into higher office.  It didn't work out though.  Compare Beto's missed opportunity run with what might have been.  Think about if he had quickly turned from his race against Ted Cruz into a Senate competition against John Cornyn.  He was polling near even with him just months ago, and with Biden at the top of the ticket he wouldn't have had to improve his performance by that much in 2020 to get the Senate victory.  If Biden has some legs in red states (and polls show he does have some), O'Rourke could have beaten Cornyn, getting him a Senate seat in a critical state, and set him up for a major presidential campaign in 2024 or 2028, a Democrat who has proven he can carry the electoral gold mine of Texas.  He's now a two-time loser who has no obvious path to another major statewide office, and is from a state with a growing Democratic bench that isn't going to clear-the-field for him in a third at bat.  O'Rourke bet, badly, and it might have cost him a truly plausible path to the Oval Office.

Tom Steyer (D-CA)

Tom Steyer/Eric Swalwell: These two couldn't have less in common, but I'm grouping them together due to their home state.  Both Tom Steyer & Eric Swalwall were never going to be president in 2020-that was clear from the get out.  But there were paths to the presidency for them if they had done particularly well.  Dianne Feinstein, for example, is surely not going to be a nominee in 2024 (she'll be in her early 90's), and a strong run here would have made them the heir presumptive to that seat, or perhaps put them in the good position to succeed Kamala Harris if she was on the national ticket.  Their runs, here, though, showed them to not have an undeniable claim as the "next big thing" in California in the way that people like Harris and Gov. Newsom have done.  Steyer & Swalwell instead had kind of pathetic runs, and won't be able to stave off challenges from other prominent California politicians like Alex Padilla & Xavier Becerra after their runs here-in fact, they likely hurt their chances of holding higher office.  Steyer has obscene amounts of money to console him, and Swalwell is very young in a safely blue seat (so he could recover), but this took the sheen off of their careers.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)

Tulsi Gabbard: It was never entirely clear what Tulsi Gabbard was doing in this contest.  Initially I kind of believed Hillary Clinton's pet theories that she was doing this for a potential third party run, but that wasn't the case, as she stayed in long enough to trigger sore loser laws and recently endorsed Joe Biden.  As a result, Gabbard's run here is a total mystery, as she ran far too much to the right to ever be palatable for a major run in Hawaii (she likely would have lost her House primary, let alone be able to take on other prominent Hawaiians in the 2022 gubernatorial race), and a position in the Biden cabinet wouldn't be worth the squeeze for Biden (why risk the ire of the left?).  We talked a while back about the women who have run for president, and how many of their runs ended with them being more historical footnotes than serious contenders.  Gabbard stayed in way longer than most of them (she was the last of the five sitting women in Congress still running), but footnote status seems certain for her run, and after this, her career.  For a woman who isn't yet 40, that's got to be a big personal blow.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) & Cory Booker (D-NJ)

Cory Booker/Kirsten Gillibrand: Booker & Gillibrand I'm grouping together compared to the next sextet because there was clearly, at one point, a path for these two.  In fact, since they became senators the words "future president" have almost always floated around their names.  Both are young, telegenic, good speakers...and America showed no appetite for them.  Gillibrand ended up paying for the sins of Al Franken, a grossly sexist outcome that I have discussed on this blog too many times to count, but her run also showed that she's not only vulnerable in a presidential primary, but one wonders if some progressive might take her on in 2024 for her Senate seat, sensing blood-in-the-water, something no one would have suspected possible at the outset of this race.  Booker isn't in a similar situation, but it's hard to see him rebounding and getting back onto the national court again.  A lot of what was appealing about a Booker candidacy was his youth and hopefulness, a truly optimistic & kind politician that would have countered perfectly against Donald Trump.  That he couldn't even make it work in a situation like 2020 makes me think that his career trajectory ends in the Senate.  Both of these two will be major voices in the Democratic Party as long as they hold their current offices, but after these runs, I don't think we'll see the phrase "future president" next to their names anymore.

Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA)

Deval Patrick/Michael Bennet/John Delaney/Bill de Blasio/Seth Moulton/Tim Ryan: All of these men have held major office-some still do.  None of them are "gadfly" candidates who could be easily dismissed.  And some of them will continue to be policymakers for years to come.  But when the reaction to your presidential race is "why?" more than anything else, you have a problem.  Deval Patrick would have been a decent running-mate for someone like Amy Klobuchar, but his run here indicated he doesn't have the political skills for the national stage.  Moulton took what once was a promising career in Massachusetts and screwed up twice, first by challenging Nancy Pelosi, and then by not getting behind Elizabeth Warren.  It's doubtful he'll be able to win a statewide primary in Massachusetts after those two errors.  Tim Ryan could be nominated statewide in Ohio, but as that state drifts further red, it's obvious that he missed a major opportunity by not running for governor two years ago if he ever wanted to be president.  The same could be said for John Delaney in Maryland-he won't have a clean play at the governor's mansion in 2022 like he would've in 2018, and has little hope of even winning his seat back after running the longest primary campaign of anyone on this list.  Bill de Blasio's campaign was so short I don't actually remember it.  And Michael Bennet...well, he'll always have James Carville, I guess.

Undecided

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

Elizabeth Warren: Elizabeth Warren briefly seemed like she might be the nominee.  Before Bernie resurfaced, it was she who looked like she could take charge of both wings of the party and best Biden.  But that didn't happen.  Warren has a core of adamant admirers after this race, but her performance in the primary severely missed expectations, and she couldn't even win her home state.  Considering her age, I don't entirely know where Warren goes from here.  It's possible she takes up the mantle of someone like Ted Kennedy, the man whose seat she now holds, who took a disappointing presidential primary and turned it into decades of progressive leadership in the US Senate, becoming the "lion of the Senate," a remarkable second act in American politics.  Or she could decide that, with her presidential hopes dashed (as they likely are-by 2024 it'll be difficult to sell Warren's campaign even if Biden loses this year), that she'll retire after this term, a politician of enormous potential who couldn't realize it.  Warren's a question mark because I don't entirely know what she wants going forward, but considering her age, especially if Biden wins, it's doubtful she'll ever have a shot at the White House again.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)

Amy Klobuchar: Klobuchar is a bit easier to figure out why she's undecided.  For starters, she's younger than Warren by a decade, giving her more time to both set up a second run for POTUS and to make a different sort of mark on American politics.  She could be Joe Biden's running-mate, which would instantly put her at the top of the winner's list here, but I don't think that will happen.  What I do think will happen is that Klobuchar, who showed skill but not enough long-term strategy this year, will be back in four, eight, twelve years, with another shot at the Oval Office.  In the meantime, part of me wonders if we're looking at a future Senate Leader.  Schumer can't hold that office forever (he'll be 70 later this year), and his deputies Dick Durbin & Patty Murray aren't getting any younger.  Klobuchar seems very well-liked by both wings of the party in the Senate.  Being the Senate Democratic Leader wouldn't be the presidency, but it'd put her in the most powerful meetings in DC, and her campaign made that possible.  But we won't know this answer for at least a few more years.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)

Kamala Harris: Harris was at one point a clear frontrunner for the nomination.  If there was a "Barack Obama-style" candidate in this race, it was either she or Beto O'Rourke that seemed the most obvious options.  That she was bested by a small-town mayor in that regard (and even he didn't end up the nominee) is an embarrassment.  But Harris ended her race with enough dignity (and endorsed Joe Biden quickly enough) that it might not matter.  There is a very real possibility that Harris is going to be Joe Biden's choice as running-mate, and that would put her in the winner's circle here, as obviously she'd have achieved a higher office/position with that jump.  But it'd also mean that, other than Joe Biden, she'd be the person on this list who would be in the best position to make another play for the White House (former Vice Presidents tend to be the nominee when they run), either in 2024 or 2028.  All of that depends on Biden (otherwise, Harris is in a similar boat to Klobuchar, wondering how to remount a second act), but the odds are solid that she might end up the (second) biggest winner on this list.