Donald Trump faces competition from a line-up of Democrats
Since the earthquake election of Donald Trump, Democrats have been consumed with two questions: how do they ensure he is a one-term president, and who’ll get them into the White House?
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Since the earthquake election of Donald Trump in November 2016, Democrats have been consumed with two questions: how do they ensure he is at most a one-term president, and who will lead them back into the White House?
In the past three weeks, a diverse line-up of contenders has emerged, the already crowded field including a prominent African-American woman, an openly gay millennial mayor from a Republican state, an outspoken vegan and a veteran bankruptcy lawyer looking to tax America’s ultra-wealthy.
So far nine Democrats are officially running while about 20 more are seriously considering their options. No Republicans have yet nominated to run against incumbent Trump, a prospect that polls show the party favours but which is currently considered political suicide.
While it’s too early to label favourites, there is some consensus that the top three confirmed candidates based on their experience and profiles are Senators Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren, who was the first to announce she was running, on New Year’s Eve, more than a year before the start of Democratic primaries.
Primary elections are held over several months in the US at state level to determine who will compete nationally to become the party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees.
Positioned to the left and a strident corporate critic Senator Warren, 69, from Massachusetts, is a former bankruptcy lawyer pushing an annual household tax of up to three per cent on the wealth of the top 0.1 per cent of Americans.
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California’s former Attorney-General, Senator Harris, 54, is the first African-American woman to nominate for president and chose Martin Luther King day to announce she was running.
The daughter of Indian and Jamaican parents who emigrated to California before she was born, she has already been targeted by fringe elements questioning whether she was born in the US, similar to the “birther” campaigns that dogged former president Barack Obama.
New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, 52, built a reputation as a fighter for women’s rights before the age of #MeToo and is one of the most outspoken liberal voices in Congress.
Like Harris and Warren, Gillibrand avoided talking about Trump when she announced her bid, a sound approach according to Democrat strategist Brian Fallon, partially to find a way to stand out in what promises to be such a crowded ticket.
“The major challenge these Democrats face is differentiating themselves from each other, and they won’t make much headway towards that goal by focusing on Trump,” former Clinton-aide Fallon said last week.
“Among Democratic primary voters, it is baked into the cake already that Trump is a horrible president.”
Afghanistan veteran and Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg is one of the youngest in the race, just two years older than the official cut-off of 35 years. A Rhodes scholar who graduated from Harvard, Buttigieg would be the first openly gay president and is riding a wave of millennial political energy.
“I belong to a generation that is stepping forward right now,” he said when he announced last week.
“We’re the generation that lived through school shootings, that served in the wars after 9/11, and we’re the generation that stands to be the first to make less than our parents unless we do something different. We can’t just polish off a system so broken. It is a season for boldness and a focus on the future.”
Hawaiian congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is also 37 and a military veteran, having served in Iraq, but her bid may be hampered by several previous controversies, including a meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and formerly having advocated against LGBTQI rights.
Other less known confirmed contenders include former San Antonio Mayor and Obama administration official Julian Castro, Maryland businessman John Delaney, entrepreneur Andrew Yang and former West Virginia senator Richard Ojeda.
What the Democrats lack so far is anyone with star power that comes close to that of Trump, who successfully parlayed the fame he built as host of The Apprentice and decades of media appearances into taking the White House.
To that end, indications from broadcaster Oprah Winfrey last year that she was considering a run were greeted with near universal approval, but she has now ruled it out.
And while some of the biggest blue names in the US are still potentially running, they are yet to confirm their intentions, including former Vice President Joe Biden and 2016 front runner Bernie Sanders, who many in the party believe was robbed of the candidacy by Hillary Clinton. Clinton herself is widely reported to still be considering a third tilt, while billionaire Michael Bloomberg, a former New York mayor and former Republican, has toyed with the notion.
Pitted against these older hands, all aged in their 70s, is a wave of younger options with the potential to lead, including prominent New Jersey senator Cory Booker, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and Massachusetts congressman Joe Kennedy, the grandson of Bobby Kennedy and great nephew of JFK.
And while he lost in November’s midterms, former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke mounted a credible challenge to 2016 Republican presidential candidate, the conservative Senator Ted Cruz, raising a record $38 million in three months without the help of professional pollsters in a positive, social media focused campaign that caught the attention of millions.
“When there’s so much cynicism and so much vitriol out there and a guy comes along and he’s relentlessly the other way — earnest and positive and open — I think that’s disarming,” said former Obama strategist David Axelrod, of O’Rourke, who has not ruled out running.
“It suggests that there’s a market out there for a more unifying figure.”
Originally published as Donald Trump faces competition from a line-up of Democrats
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