We’re off to the races! The Iowa Caucus will be underway shortly. In a little over five months there will be an official Democratic candidate for the 2020 Presidential election. As of this minute it could still be anyone’s race (well – probably not the dad from Malcolm in the Middle i.e. Michael Bennet whose name I had to look up) but that hasn’t stopped Crassers from making their predictions! We’re compiling them here so we can revisit them periodically throughout the 2020 race and weep at our naïveté marvel at our prescience.
Click through the links to see the full conversation and add your two cents in the comments!
A number of Crassers held a view best summarized by hv_: “Hate to admit it, but my actual thoughts? Really I just have one overriding thought: Trump is going to win. I’ll be very happy if I’m proven wrong, but deep down that is what I believe will happen.”
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From Ross: “It’s hard to say for sure, Bloomberg’s money is a wildcard. Don’t look at his TV ads, look at the ground game he can afford to set up in support of the eventual nominee. I believe him when he says he is willing to spend a billion dollars or more to beat Trump. I fear the party elite will rally around Biden when they should rally around Warren.”
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From The Milk Mate: “I see it as down to Bloomberg, Biden, and Sanders. Roughly a year ago on CT I thought it would come down to Biden and Sanders, didn’t predict Bloomberg… I know people dismiss me as a surrogate for Sanders, but Vegas odds has him leading at the moment. You never know what could happen.”
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From Maxichamp: “Biden will tank after an age-related gaffe. The party establishment will rally around Warren. Trump gets re-elected.”
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From APieceoftheContinent: “The Dem primary still feels like anybody’s game. (pleasenotberniepleasenotbernie).
There’s not a single Dem candidate who could win against Trump if the general election was held today but… [t]he minute the economy goes down, Trump loses. I can already visualize someone saying to Trump in a debate “You’ve bankrupted the country like you bankrupted your casinos” and Trumps head exploding. Once that happens, whoever the Dem candidate is (?) wins hands down.”
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From DontMakeMe: “I’m concerned that the top 1% who owns 80% of the wealth in the US (including many of the donor class of the Dem Party) will spend mightily to defeat Sanders or Warren, and that will set back the push for change in the Democratic Party. Our “democracy” is so warped already that even things the people support by wide margins can’t get through.”
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A lengthy multi-scenario one from Biz Monkie: “Nightmare Scenario 1: Joe Biden, despite evidence of the same brain worms Trump has, wraps up the nomination by early April. Bernie vows to keep fighting because that’s what Bernie does, which demoralizes and divides the Democratic party as many of his supporters won’t rally around Biden…
Nightmare Scenario 2: Bernie picks up a head of steam and walks out of Super Tuesday the frontrunner or close to it, causing Biden’s support to nosedive.He locks up the nomination in early April. The DNC is apoplectic after Bernie swears fealty to the National Socialist Workers Party on stage at the DNC. He and Trump argue at eachother for the next seven months and Trump wins every state but New York and California, and the Democratic Party is deemed by progressives to be still not sufficiently progressive enough…
Hopeful Scenario: Warren eeks out just enough votes… Trump is caught on a camera calling her either the b-word or the c-word, his support among women virtually zeros out. The economy nosedives around September and Warren wins 26 states, losing Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia, while winning Virginia, Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and Democrats recapture the Senate.”
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From The Grand Inquisitor: “The primary is a bloodbath with no clear winner between Iowa, NH, SC, and Super Tuesday. Progressives fight an interparty civil war over Liz and Bernie. Everyone else in the party hates Bernie and since Biden and Pete are duds and Bloomberg is a joke, Warren ends up with the nomination after a bloody convention that almost certainly goes thru more than one vote. Warren will pick a Blue Dog to balance the ticket (hello Tim Kaine!).
Trump falls apart and the never-Trump GOP falls in behind Welch or Walsh making the whole thing a shit show. Moderate, suburban republicans don’t bother to show up at the polls and some red staters will take Warren’s populism because they are not winning economically under Trump. Warren wins by the tiniest of margins and faith in the election process tanks. Dems will keep the House and the Senate will be split by only a couple votes.”
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From Fingies!: “I see Trump self-destructing in some sort of spectacular way..THAT SAID! This won’t be the end of him, because the Republicans can’t lose, because he’s all they’ve got now, and because Trump is so criminal that he’ll call on the devil himself to save him…so it will get very, very ugly before we even get to November.
I fear the Dems will implode at some point… Bernie. will. fuck. things. up. He just will… I’m unsure how Bloomberg will fit in. No one wants him…but he has tons of cash to spend and no real reason not to throw it at whomever he wants in the endgame and I see that person as either Biden or Warren.
Whoever comes out of this will be bloodied by the end. Dems will be dissatisfied and if Trump attempts to steal another election AND LET’S FACE IT HE WILL, hopefully whoever comes out of the Dem contest has enough fight left in them for Trump’s crazy, because it will be crazy. If we win, Republicans will make it hell on Earth everyday and if possible they will impeach before we hit Summer 2021. If Trump wins hell on Earth is already guaranteed, so.”
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And our final (particularly dire) prediction comes from CubeRootOfPi: “I think another possibility to consider is whether or not Trump/Republicans willingly relinquish power despite losing the election.”
“First 2020 presidential election bumper sticker” (CC BY 2.0) by Peter Stevens
