The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Can the Democrats Win with Identity Politics?

Perry Bacon Jr. considers this question in his latest article on 538. He starts out by noting:

The case for Democrats both running on populism and centering their electoral strategy around appealing to Midwestern white voters without college degrees is fairly strong. After all, polls show that voters are more aligned with the Democrats on some high-profile economic issues than on some hot-button cultural ones. Recent electoral history also seems to make this case. Then-President Barack Obama leaned heavily into economic populism during his successful 2012 re-election bid, when he won states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Hillary Clinton lost those three states and the election in 2016 after a campaign in which both she and President Trump spoke bluntly about issues around race and identity. In turn, Democratic congressional leaders emphasized a pocketbook messagefor the 2018 midterms, and the party’s candidates executed it, highlighting health care, particularly the GOP push to repeal Obamacare, more than perhaps any other issue. And the Democrats made huge gains in November.

Looking ahead to 2020, the easiest, clearest path for the Democrats to get 270 electoral votes is for them to win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and all three states’ electorates have a higher percentage of whites without college degrees and a lower percentage of people of color than the nation overall. And those three states have already shown signs of bouncing back toward Democrats — the party won the governor’s race in all three in November.

I couldn’t have put it better myself. Bacon then proceeds to try to make the case for an alternative approach where Democrats “talk a lot about equality and identity issues, and…focus on turning out nonwhite voters and white people with college degrees as much as white people without degrees.”

One interesting point he makes here is is that Obama-Trump voters get a lot of attention but there are also Obama-nonvoter in 2016 and Obama-third party voters who could be targets and who have a different profile. So perhaps these voters need a good dose of identity politics. Bacon also notes how much of 2018 Democrats’ success was derived from opposition to Trump on non-economic issues like immigration..So identity politics could be a way of mining that part of the electorate.

Well, maybe. But it seems to me that any 2020 Democratic candidate will implicitly and explicitly be running against Trump’s rhetoric and policies around immigration and other culturally-inflected issues. I’m not sure a candidate needs to be very left or identity politics–oriented to convince voters that he or she is indeed an alternative to Trump and what he stands for.

But Bacon makes an interesting case and it’s worth reading. Honest fellow that he is, he admits that he himself does not completely buy his own argument and concludes:

“I’m making a case here, and it’s purposefully a bit provocative. The clearest way for Democrats to win in 2020 is for the party to carry Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — three states that have lots of white voters without college degrees and where Trump’s tax and health care plans are very unpopular. Perhaps Democrats aren’t disciplined enough to talk about race and identity without also talking about related issues (reparations, for example) that may turn off swing voters…..So I’m not sure that this kind of non-economic liberalism is the best strategy for Democrats. But I’m not sure it isn’t either.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

David Byler continues to do excellent data work at the Washington Post and is out with a new column that examines the role of the white working class in the Democratic party. That’s right, the Democratic party not the Republican party. As Byler reminds us, the white working class, despite shrinking as a proportion of voters and leaning strongly Republican these days, is still a very important part of the Democratic coalition (I should note here that the States of Change project will be issuing a major report in June on Democratic and Republican party coalitions, going back to 1980 and projected forward through the 2036 election. Watch for that!)

I’ve been watching the polls closely to see if the president’s getting the sort of popularity “bump” he anticipated from the news that Mueller didn’t find clear-cut evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice, and wrote it up at New York:

[N]ine days after Barr’s letter to Congress revealing Mueller’s legal conclusions was transmitted and released, a growing number of public opinion surveys are showing virtually no change in Trump’s famously stable (or stagnant, depending on how you look at it) approval ratings. His average approval rating according to RealClearPolitics was 43.6 percent on March 24, the day the Barr letter was released, and was 43.2 percent on April 1. At FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s average approval rating was an identical 42.1 percent on March 24 and April 1.

Nate Silver notes that there’s quite a bit of data supporting a “no game-changer” read on the Barr letter:

“While I’d urge a little bit of caution on these numbers — sometimes there’s a lag before a news event is fully reflected in the polls — there’s actually been quite a bit of polling since Barr’s letter came out, including polls from high-quality organizations such as Marist College, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, Quinnipiac University and the Pew Research Center which were conducted wholly or partially after the Barr letter was published. Some of these polls showed slight improvements in Trump’s approval rating, but others showed slight declines. Unless you’re willing to do a lot of cherry-picking, there just isn’t anything to make the case that much has changed.”

In terms of explaining this result, Silver offers an assortment of possible interpretations, but the one that makes the most intuitive sense is that the only people who really cared whether Trump colluded with the Russians were Democrats, who aren’t going to turn around and praise his presidency even if they are convinced he didn’t commit one of many horrific acts:

For the same reason, the full Mueller report isn’t likely to cut much ice in public opinion, either, whether it supports or undermines the positive claims Trump and his allies have been making with every breath. And it’s another indication that opinions of the 45th president are so sharply polarized that it will be difficult to change them, which means the identity of his 2020 opponent and the degree of enthusiasm he can inspire in the MAGA crowd may determine his fate. Since the Trump campaign and Republicans generally have already preemptively been pounding the 2020 Democratic field as a bright-red landscape of unremitting socialism, infanticide, and political correctness, while encouraging his supporters to approach the campaign season in a hate rage, the Mueller report and Barr’s summary probably won’t change his reelection strategy, either.

The Nation’s Editor Katrina vanden Heuval has the progressive response to Trump’s bellowing about “the best economy ever” under his Administration: “It’s true that wages have begun to rise a bit, with demand for workers and minimum-wage hikes in states and localities finally giving a boost to those on the bottom. But the average weekly pay has grown less than 1 percent per year for the decade. Low-wage workers’ hourly pay in 2017 barely surpassed what they earned in 1979, while that of high-wage workers has increased nearly 50 percent. Inequality is at extremes not seen since 1928. Workers are still not capturing a fair share of the increased productivity that they help to create…And while incomes have stagnated, key costs have soared. Health care remains remarkably expensive; millions go without insurance or are underinsured. Gallup reports that since Trump took office, the number of Americans without health insurance has increased by a stunning 7 million. Female, younger and lower-income workers have seen a greater decline than those who are male, older and/or wealthier. Life expectancy has declined for the third year in a row. The lack of health care explains part of that. The savage opioid epidemic—a disease of despair—accounts for another chunk.”

Osita Nwanevu explains how “Progressive Activists Are Pushing the Democratic Field on Political Reforms” at The New Yorker: “To the extent that Democrats have engaged with the appetite for political reforms, they have done so by endorsing ideas that the next Democratic President will probably be unable to see through, like the elimination of the Electoral College, or ideas that, while achievable and well grounded, like automatic voter registration or campaign-finance reform, do not resolve the main challenges to Democratic policymaking. The primary obstacle to the next Democratic President’s agenda will be the anti-majoritarian institutions and norms that shape federal policymaking. These could conceivably be altered by a Democratic President and Congress, but in ways, such as eliminating the filibuster and expanding the Supreme Court, that the Democratic Presidential candidates have mostly refused to explicitly endorse. Progressive activists have yet to truly penalize the 2020 contenders for their reticence. But, as the promises made by the candidates grow bolder by the week, we can expect more questions, like the toughest ones posed Monday, about how, exactly, they intend to keep them.”

Sure, there are lots of people who are happy with their health insurance, as well as millions more who are not. But you don’t have to look very far for the horror stories, nor for statistics that show how poorly the health insurance industry serves the public overall, as Roqayah Chamseddine documents in his article, “A Healthcare Industry Built on Premature Death: On the cruelty of private healthcare corporations.” As Chamseddine writes, “The industry is an architecture of misery, extracting profits from suffering. According to a report published in 2017 by The Doctor-Patient Rights Project, insurance companies “denied treatment coverage to one-in-four (24 percent) patients with a chronic or persistent illness or condition; 41 percent of the patients denied coverage were denied once, while 59 percent were denied multiple times.” Thirty-four percent of patients who had been denied coverage were forced to put off treatment, despite having a chronic illness. An astounding 70 percent of treatments for a chronic illness denied by insurers were for conditions referred to as “serious.” The grim reaper disguises himself in many forms, in this case that of an insurance agent.”

At shareblue.com, Oliver Willis has some talking points for Democrats regarding Republicans and veterans. As Willis reports, “Acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought testified before the House Budget Committee on Tuesday…In his 2019 budget, Trump has proposed rounding down the cost-of-living adjustments given to veterans. Military Times notes that the idea “has been decried by veterans groups in the past as unfairly using their earned benefits to balance the budget.”…Vought said, “We don’t think [the cuts] will have any adverse impact” when asked about the attack on veterans by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA)…”No adverse impact? No adverse impact to decreased cost of living adjustments?” Moulton asked incredulously…”That’s correct,” Vought replied. “I think you should speak to some veterans, Mr. Vought,” the congressman replied, ending the exchange…The cold dismissal of veterans’ concerns is the latest in a long line of slights and attacks on the military from Trump. He largely views the armed services as a useful backdrop for his presidency, via venues like parades, rather than as an institution to be supported and respected…In the same budget document, Trump fraudulently takes credit for the “largest” increase in military pay in a decade, but the military received larger increases twice under Obama.”

Eric Levitz has some bad news for Dems at New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: “In Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race last year, Democrat Tony Evers defeated Scott Walker by one percent statewide — but won a majority of votes in only36 of the state’s 99 Assembly districts. That same night, Democratic candidates won 53 percent of all ballots cast for the state Assembly, even as Republicans won a 27-seat majority in that body…In other words: The 2018 midterms confirmed that the GOP has gerrymandered Wisconsin’s electoral maps so aggressively, it will be essentially impossible for the Democratic Party to gain control of that (purple) state’s legislature until its maps are redrawn…This point was not lost on the Wisconsin GOP. Immediately following Evers’s victory, Republicans convened a special legislative session to transfer powers from the popularly elected branch of government that Democrats had just won to the undemocratically elected branch that the GOP couldn’t lose…These developments forced Wisconsin Democrats to confront a harrowing possibility: that their triumph in the governor’s race would not stop the GOP from locking up the state legislature for another decade.”

At The Hill, Rachel Frazin reports that “Delaware Gov. John Carney (D) signed a bill that would give the state’s presidential electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, according to The Associated Press…In signing the bill, Delaware became the 13th state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.” Frazin adds,

With the addition of Delaware, states that belong to the compact hold 184 electoral votes, still well short of the 270 needed for a candidate to ascend to the White House — which is also the threshold at which the pact takes effect.

Little Delaware only adds 3 electoral votes to the popular vote interstate compact total. About Two months ago, Colorado joined the list of states enacting similar legislation. Delaware changes the new total of Electoral College votes needed to 86 to insure that the popular vote would determine the outcome of presidential elections.

The smallest number of states needed to enact similar measures would be three states, including Texas (38 EVs), Florida (29 EVs) and Pensylvania (20 EVs). There is a larger number of combinations of four states which could also pass the initiative to end the domination of the Electoral College.

In general, Democrats strongly favor disempowering the Electoral College, while all but a few Repubicans support it, since the GOP has won two presidential elections since 2000, while losing the popular vote

Here is a list of some states that have not yet passed the compact, with the party breakdown of their state legislatures and governorships:

Florida: Repubican Governor, R+6 Senate, R+25 House

Georgia: Republican Governor, R+14 Senate, R+29 House

Michigan: Democratic Governor, R+4 Senate, R+6 House

Minnesota: Democratic Governor, R+3 Senate, D+16 House

North Carolina: Democratic Governor, R+8 Senate, R+10 House

Ohio: Republican Governor, R+13 Senate, R+23 House

Pennsylvania: Democratic Governor, R+4 Senate, R+16 House

Texas: Republican Governor, R+7 Senate, R+17 House

Virginia: Democratic Governor, R+2 Senate, R+2 House

Wisconsin: Democratic Governor, R+5 Senate, R+28 House

There are some other states that could add to the compact’s total. But these are states with the largest number of Electoral Votes.

Of course the Republicans would challenge the constitutionality of the compact, when it achieves the 270 vote threshold. But the Constitution does state quite clearly (Article II, Section 1) that states have the right to determine how to allocate their electoral votes. A nation-wide Democratic landslide in 2020 would be the game-changer.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

One of the most consequential decisions of Obama’s early administration was to let a small group of, as Simon Johnson puts it in an excellent American Prospect review essay, Status Quo Republicans–Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson–set the overall response to the financial crisis. As Johnson remarks, if you hire Republicans, you will get Republican policy.

Johnson’s review essay covers two books, a jointly written defense of their role in the financial crisis by Bernanke, Geithner and Paulson and Reed Hundt’s new book, A Crisis Wasted: Barack Obama’s Defining Decisions. (Hundt, FCC chairman under Bill Clinton, was on Obama’s 2008 transition team and, besides knowing all the players, had a close-up view of these decisions being made).

Hundt’s book is primarily concerned with why an alternative approach was not taken, rather than letting the Status Quo Republicans run the show. Hundt’s answer, as summarized by Johnson:

“Obama did not bring with him a large, experienced team, and during the campaign he developed only broad-brush ideas. The experts on the details were almost all people who had worked with the Clintons. They were Small Ball Democrats—smart people with admirable ideas, but hardly in a position to stand up to Status Quo Republicans. New Deal–style Democrats were conspicuous by their absence.

The financial sector was saved, largely intact, by unprecedented government support. If homeowners had received the same level of support in 2008-2009—for example, in the form of cheap refinanced mortgages—what would have happened? The American economy would have recovered, house prices would have risen, and everyone involved would have looked like a genius. Modern central banks control the price level and this has a primary, direct effect on asset prices—including housing. In most of the country, house prices bounced back but millions of homeowners could not finance their way through the trough. Powerful people in the financial sector could obtain cheap loans, even in the darkest days, because their access to credit was the top priority for both the Bush and Obama administrations.

The result, in rough chronological order, was: mass unemployment, greater inequality, collapsed opportunity, confused anger, and President Trump. The efforts put into financial reform—making sure this could not happen again—by Messrs. Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson were weak. They lament that next time the central bank will not have the tools to deal with an incipient crisis. If that proves true, it is because their generation undermined the legitimacy of the Federal Reserve through inattention to regulation, consumer protection, and blatant bad behavior before the crisis, and through subsequently allowing the Too Big To Fail banks to become even larger and more dangerous—the total indebtedness of JPMorgan Chase today is in the range of $2.5 trillion.”

This really was the great failure of the Obama administration. Where it really counted, they just had the wrong people in charge and the consequences were immense. There is nothing more important than ensuring this does not happen again.

As Johnson concludes his essay:

“It is unlikely that the next Democratic president will want to be seen as another reincarnation of the Clinton administration. But are the potential home-run policy ideas being debated and honed in sufficient detail? Who will be hired—and with what experience—to be in charge of implementation? What are the plans for regulating the financial sector, which is more powerful than ever? And who exactly will be in charge when anything starts to go wrong in the macroeconomy? On these questions may turn both the election and the future of American democracy.”

I recommend you read this important essay in full and perhaps pick up Hundt’s book to boot. For extra credit, you could try Noam Scheiber’s book, The Escape Artists: How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery, which is an excellent, detailed account of exactly what the subtitle says it is.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

EJ Dionne, in his lengthy and generally sympathetic American Prospect review of John Judis’ new book, The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization, has coined a new term for my old friend and sometimes co-author. Here’s the end of Dionne’s review, where he applauds Judis’ grouchiness:

“[I]t is vital that progressives come to terms with what both of Judis’s books have to teach [about nationalism and populism]. It is certainly a form of willful blindness to underplay the role of racism and prejudice in Trump’s campaign and to deny that racism and nativism motivated a substantial share of his supporters. But in political terms, the more costly mistake would be to assume that all of Trump’s working-class voters were motivated by race alone and that they can therefore never be persuaded to an alternative politics.

In their vox.com article, “The big divide among 2020 Democrats over trade — and why it matters: Democrats are on the brink of completely reorienting their party on trade,” Tara Golshan and Dylan Scott provide a revealing primer on the recent history of Democratic trade policies and current policies of Democratic presidential candidates, including the following chart, which will likely provoke some arguments:

“Because the most powerful answer to the big lie is the big truth, Democrats should champion a platform of patriotism and Americanism, on issues foreign and domestic, throughout the 2020 elections…Democrats should not “pivot” from talking about the Russian attack against America to talking about the Trump attack against health care for Americans. We should talk about both…A patriot platform for Democrats in 2020 would include a powerful statement about core values of Americanism. Our presidents should be chosen by Americans, not Russians. Government must serve the people by offering them a better life, higher wages and improved health, rather than ripping off the people with a scandal-ridden regime that treats the government of the people as a piggy bank for greed, sweetheart deals, nepotism and insider corruptions.” –from Brent Budoiwsky’s “A patriot platform for 2020 Dems” at The Hill.

Carrie Dann reports that “According to a new NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll, 29 percent of Americans say they believe Trump has been cleared of wrongdoing, based on what they have heard about Mueller’s findings, while 40 percent say they do not believe he has been cleared,” Carrie Dann reports at nbcnews.com “But a third of Americans — 31 percent — say they’re not sure if Trump has been cleared. That includes nearly half of independents (45 percent) and about a quarter of both Democrats (27 percent) and Republicans (25 percent.)..The public is still in a wait-and-see view of this investigation and what it means for Trump,” said Jeff Horwitt of the Democratic firm Hart Research, which conducted the poll along with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies.”

FiveThirtyEight’s Dhrumil Mehta notes that “A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted after special counsel Robert Mueller ended his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election found that 47 percent of registered voters still think that Trump tried to “impede or obstruct the investigation,” even though Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report did not make a determination on whether the president obstructed justice” and that “74 percent of registered voters, including 56 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of Democrats, told YouGov in a poll this week that they think the full contents of Mueller’s report should be made public.”

A nifty graphic from Kyle Kondik’s “This Century’s Electoral College Trends: Tracking the strength of the parties in all 50 states ‘ at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

2020 Crystal Ball Electoral College ratings

In “Other Polling Nuggets,” Mehta also notes that “Half of registered voters say that presidential elections should be determined by the national popular vote, while 34 percent say they should be determined by the Electoral College, according to another Morning Consult poll. Seventy-two percent of Democrats thought the national popular vote should decide elections compared to just 30 percent of Republicans, whereas 57 percent of Republicans preferred the Electoral College compared to 16 percent of Democrats.”

At The Daily Beast, Gideon Resnick explains why Democratic presidential candidates are “racing to post large fundraising numbers by the end of the first quarter on March 31” and noters that “A poor showing on the number of donors could be a death blow for some of the top-tier Democrats in the race, signifying that they lack the support and financial viability to make it through. The number of individual contributors, after all, demonstrates not just the extent of a campaign’s grassroots support, but also indicates a strong foundation for future fundraising, since a large pool of small donors can be hit up for cash again and again…the real competition among the field is not so much who can bring in the biggest haul, but which candidate can get the most people to contribute. That’s the number that the top money people on various campaigns say they will be watching when the deadline hits.”

In her article, “The New Politics of the Retirement CrisisAs 18 million Baby Boomers brace for the financial insecurity of old age, Democrats are pushing to expand Social Security and other elderly benefits.” at The New Republic, Rachel Cohen reports that “46 percent of Americans expect to be financially insecure when they retire, anticipating their government and employers will do next to nothing to help them. But these grim fears also open up a political opportunity. In the last election cycle, Democrats campaigned heavily on health care (by mid-October, 55 percent of their television ads centered on the issue). It’s this focus, many suspect, that helped them improve their margins among elderly voters, with seniors casting their ballots almost evenly between the two parties—a marked shift from years past…There are signs that retirement will play a significant role in the 2020 race. In February, Bernie Sanders reintroducedthe Social Security Expansion Act, with sponsorships from three other leading Democratic presidential contenders: Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris. They belong to a congressional caucus dedicated to increasing Social Security benefits. Formed last fall, it already has more than 150 Democratic members, and Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, another presidential candidate, are its co-chairs in the Senate.

Sean J. Miller of Campaigns & elections reports that “During winning Senate races last cycle, campaigns on weighted average spent only 4-7 percent of their media budgets on digital, according to a new report by Tech For Campaigns, a non-profit that provides technology services to campaigns on the left…The report puts digital spending last cycle at $623 million, which is below earlier estimates which pegged it around $950 million…The average spend on digital overall for campaigns and PACs in 2018 was 2.7-5.1 percent, with 50 percent of the media budget going to TV and direct mail…Jessica Alter, co-founder of TFC, called the percentage of digital spending “shockingly low.”…The 2019 C&E/PSB Research State of the Campaign Industry Poll found a large majority of political professionals believe digital spending will actually reach parity with TV spend by the 2024 presidential cycle.”

Some sobering insights from Ronald Brownstein’s “Trump’s Opponents Have One Assignment Now: There’s a far better chance of uprooting the president’s influence if he’s beaten at the ballot box” at The Atlantic:

There’s a far better chance of uprooting his influence over the long run if his presidency is ended by the voters, not the courts or Congress…Trump has demonstrated that there is a substantial audience in the evolving Republican electoral coalition for a message that combines open appeals to white racial resentments and unrelenting attacks on “elites” with an undiluted commitment to the traditional goals of economic and social conservatives—from cutting taxes and eliminating environmental regulations, to opposing abortion and installing conservative justices on the Supreme Court. The appeal of that formula for significant elements of the GOP base would not disappear even if Trump were forced from office by one of the many investigations still swirling around him. Perhaps the only way other Republicans might be discouraged from following Trump’s volatile path is if voters show them that it’s an electoral dead end by repudiating it in 2020.

An electoral rather than legal verdict on this presidency is probably a better outcome for the Trump detractors who consider him a threat to both the rule of law and the nation’s social cohesion. If Trump were compelled to leave office before 2020, through either resignation or congressional action, the majority of his supporters would almost certainly view it as an illegitimate coup by the establishment forces in both parties. And that would allow them to claim that his agenda, tone, and electoral strategy—what could be called Trumpism—had been betrayed, but not defeated.

Further, Brownstein adds, “the fusion between the party and its volatile president is steadily growing more complete. And that convergence increases the odds that the 2020 election could harden the existing divisions between what I’ve called the Democratic “coalition of transformation”—diverse, younger, white-collar, metropolitan-based—and the Republican “coalition of restoration,” centered on blue-collar, evangelical, and older whites who mostly live outside major urban areas…such a defining election is exactly what the veteran Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg is expecting. He believes that the president has presented Democrats with the opportunity to cement a majority coalition by identifying the GOP so unequivocally with opposition to demographic and cultural change and with an economic agenda tilted heavily toward the interests of the most affluent.”

Rather than wringing hands in despair over Barr’s summary of the Mueller report, Democrats should seize the opportunity that is being presented by the GOP’s dubious bet on Trump and turn it into an overwhelming repudiation at the polls.

In 2020, Greenberg argues, the electorate could break away from Trump as decisively as it did in 2018. Last year, Democrats captured more than 53 percent of the total House popular vote and benefited from several factors: big margins from minorities and young people, a sharp shift in their direction among well-educated whites, and even modest recovery among working-class whites, especially women distressed by the president’s effort to repeal the ACA.

Where both sides might agree is that the results at the ballot box, rather than in any legal proceeding, now look to be the crucial factor in determining whether Trumpism represents a short-term detour rooted in a single (and singular) individual, or a lasting force in American politics.

“Even in its truncated form,” Brownstein concludes, ” Barr’s summary of the Mueller report signals that no outside force is coming to undermine Trump’s message by disqualifying the messenger. It was probably a false hope to ever assume that some personal vulnerability on Trump’s part would marginalize his agenda. The assignment facing Democrats and Republicans alike who consider Trump’s vision a unique threat is clearer now than ever: Prove at the ballot box in 2020 that a decisive majority of Americans reject it.”

The huge field of Democrats running or considering a 2020 presidential race has a lot of diversity. I discussed one aspect of their differences this week at New York:

In assessing the very large Democratic field assembling to challenge Trump in 2020, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that a lot of politicians with résumés that would not normally bespeak presidential timber have taken a look at the 45th president’s rise to the White House and concluded there are no longer any minimum requirements. Yes, there have been presidents with no prior experience in elected office, but before Trump they were all war heroes (Taylor, Grant, and Eisenhower) or Cabinet members (Taft and Hoover). A few major-party nominees were closer to Trump in the empty résumé department (notably 1904 Democratic nominee Alton Parker, a state judge, and 1940 Republican nominee Wendell Willkie, a utility executive), but for the most part, especially in more recent times, the major parties have nominated former or current senators and governors.

A recent Morning Consult poll suggests that rank-and-file Democratic voters still value that kind of high-level experience, with 66 percent saying that “decades of political experience” was “very important” or “somewhat important” to them in choosing a 2020 nominee. That could help explain why two candidates (one potential and one actual) who together have 81 years of experience in elected office, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, top every poll. And there’s more where that came from: An astonishing seven former or current U.S. senators are in the race.

It’s possible that while Trump hasn’t totally dispelled an interest in experience among voters in either party, Democrats are less worried than they might normally be about sending up a relative novice to oppose him; it’s not like Trump is going to depict himself as the wise, credentialed, steady hand on the tiller. It’s notable that candidates at both ends of the experience spectrum — Biden and Sanders, and O’Rourke and Buttigieg — are thought to be potentially strong among the white working-class voters so important to Trump’s 2016 election and 2020 reelection prospects. Perhaps all that’s going on is that against the terrifying Trump Democrats are valuing perceived electability above all.

It’s also possible that candidates like O’Rourke and Buttigieg are best compared to recent flash-in-the-pan presidential candidates on the Republican side like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain (in 2012) or Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina (in 2016), who got an audition but were eventually cast aside. But one thing’s for sure: Democrats won’t forget about Trump and what happened in 2016 for a moment in selecting their next nominee.