There is no prophet in the Democratic Party

Less than nine months are left before the US presidential election. It’s five months before the Democratic Party’s election conference, where a candidate is determined to challenge Donald Trump. Democrats' primaries are in full swing. And somehow everything goes with them, not thank God ...

Just a couple of months ago, former vice president Joe Biden was considered the "inevitable" winner of the party’s selection of the opposition. Well-known mainstream analysts, television "talking heads" and electoral experts vied with each other to praise "Uncle Joe." Like, only he can deprive Trump of a second term. He is the leader of all American liberals. He is supported by African Americans and other minorities. He has vast experience in international affairs. He is Obama's successor. Finally, he is simply incorruptible and morally resistant!

When Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states where party selection began, began to receive alarming reports about the unpopularity of the “main candidate,” the liberal press considered this a minor issue. In the end, Joe still has time. He has enough means and influence to convince party voters that he is their best candidate.

By that time, hearings were in full swing in the House of Representatives on impeachment of the president. The topic of impeachment was sensitive. After all, it was precisely the investigation of the "amazing adventures" of Biden and other representatives of the Obama administration that Donald Trump demanded from President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky. All the efforts of the headquarters of the former vice president were thrown to secure the candidate from the emerging scandal. And for some time it was possible. America was following the investigation into Trump, not the newly discovered evidence of Joe's corruption.

In my opinion, this was precisely the main mistake of Biden’s headquarters. Instead of proving that their candidate is not under jurisdiction and that it is worth calling the person in the White House, and not his "main rival" at all, analysts and political strategists should carefully monitor the mood in the party. The Ukrainian trace may have influenced the primaries, but it was not the main reason for the rapid decline in the ratings of the “inevitable winner” not only in Iowa and New Hampshire, but also throughout the country.

This is not the first time Joe has been trying to run for president. His previous attempts were in 1988 and 2008. - ingloriously ended in the early stages of the primaries. He quickly gave up under the pressure of circumstances and media attacks and returned to his familiar world of the honored old senator from the small state of the east coast of Delaware, whose voters he entertained with Irish jokes and mostly fictional stories from the life of the “simple guy Joe”.

Biden's high point was to come in 2016. Then the liberal public persuaded to enter the presidential race of two politicians - the vice president of the United States and the leader of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, Senator Elizabeth Warren. He was the hope of the center-left, she was the favorite of the nascent faction of the so-called democratic socialists (to put it simply - American Trotskyist radicals). But both "stars" in 2016 refused to participate in the race. Instead, Clinton (as Biden had recently been considered) was put up against the equally "inevitable winner", in fact, a sparring partner, Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders. But this primaries race was unexpectedly interesting and exciting, despite the staged finale. Warren supported Hillary and took part in several of her campaigns under the pretext of "female solidarity", and Biden referred to family circumstances and ... age. And this is four years ago!

They both had to pay for their indecision and too much loyalty to the party leaders. Well, this boss would be the winner! So no.

All party leaders sworn to Hillary lost the 2016 historic elections to Donald Trump with her. No wonder that the Democratic Party elector turned his back on both Joe and Elizabeth. Which showed the caucus in Iowa and the primaries in New Hampshire.

In 2020, in Iowa, Warren took only third place, and Biden - fourth. In New Hampshire, "Uncle Joe" became fifth, and Pocahontas (as Trump Warren called amid the scandal surrounding her supposedly Native American descent) took fourth place. At the same time, in New Hampshire, none of them received a single delegate to the final election conference. That is, at the start they suffered a crushing defeat.

Of course, Iowa and New Hampshire are not limited to the struggle for the party nomination of a presidential candidate. In all, the Democrats will have to elect 3,786 delegates to the pre-election congress (764 non-elected delegates from the party leadership will also be present at the congress). The first two states identified only 65 of them. The whole struggle is yet to come. March 3 will be the so-called super Tuesday, where voters of the Democratic Party of fourteen states, one associated territory and Democrats abroad will vote for “candidate candidates”. Almost one and a half thousand delegates will be in the draw. And before that - in Nevada and South Carolina - another ninety. It would seem that!

But the fact of the matter is that these are not general elections, but internal party selection. The state party activist follows the results of Iowa and New Hampshire very closely. The converse is also true. By the time these two American regions begin to choose their candidate, the moods of various factions have managed to partially crystallize throughout the country, which, in turn, affects the democratic electorate of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Throughout the recent history of the United States, not a single Democrat has become a presidential candidate without winning first place in either Iowa or New Hampshire, with one exception. In 1992, Bill Clinton did not participate in caucuses in the first state and received silver in the second. This was, of course, an exceptional case. And the candidate himself, to be fair, was extraordinary. He took a confident second place in New Hampshire, which neither Warren nor Biden can boast.

The former vice president was even forced to curtail all his campaigning in New England and go to South Carolina to try to cling to the fight.

The triumphs of the early primaries were Bernie Sanders and Pete Butledgege, a 78-year-old socialist from Vermont and a center-left mayor from Indiana at the age of 38. The nationwide ratings, on which "talking heads" have been oriented for so long, immediately "floated". The first place in them, Biden lost to Sanders. Worse, in the most promising states of the “Super Tuesday” (where in the course you can get the maximum number of delegates in your piggy bank - in California, Texas, Massachusetts), both “Uncle Joe” and “Pocahontas” immediately “slipped” in ratings .

But the ratings and the stakes of bookmakers on the “black horse” - the former New York mayor of billionaire Michael Bloomberg — are growing. He was late with registration in the first four states of the primaries and therefore will enter the battle only on March 3, in the “Super Tuesday”.

They have already invested hundreds of millions (!) Of dollars in television and Internet advertising. Bloomberg was third among Democrats in nationwide polls and second in bookmaker rates. Of course, real internal party elections can become a cold shower for Mini-Mike (the nickname given to him by Trump), but he is definitely able to get at least a couple of hundred delegates during the “Super Tuesday”.

And then in the game there will remain three candidate centrist - Biden, Bloomberg and Buttage - and the old socialist Sanders. It is difficult to say how the ultra-left wing of the Democratic Party is capable of uniting under the banner of “crazy Bernie” (also the expression of Trump), but the “center” (as far as one can talk today about centrist democrats) will definitely be overweight. In this situation, Biden is the first candidate to drop out. Moreover, the party activists of the liberals know its weakness - to give up quickly in conditions that are not ideal for him.

However, not one of the Democratic candidates is in ideal conditions today. Accustomed to certainty, political sponsors are already sounding the alarm. On February 11, 2020, Politico published a letter from the “independent” fundraising fund (Super-PEK) “Unite the Country” that invested in Biden’s election campaign. The fund calls on the establishment to "put things in order" in the party.

It is difficult to disagree with individual conclusions of “respected people”. The current state of things does not bode well for the Democratic Party. At a pre-election conference, socialists led by Sanders and billionaire Bloomberg (conditionally personifying centrists), literally buying their way to the nomination for hundreds of millions of dollars, may collide without a decisive majority of delegates. And then the party bosses at the congress will bend their own line, and the youth "street" mobilized by the ultra left - their own.

All this will happen under the sights of national TV cameras and thousands of YouTube channels that broadcast discord in the camp of democrats throughout the country. And this disorder can turn into riots.

However, it has the right to life and another interpretation of the events. Perhaps the strategists of the Democratic Party are fully aware that in November 2020 they will not beat Trump. Their task is to identify the most vivid democratic leaders and the most important, exciting most liberal Americans ideas, so that in 2024 they will come forward as a united front with a candidate personifying "life after Trump."

So far, however, they have failed. They should have resolved the issue of power in the party as early as 2018, when the midterm congressional elections were held. But this question still remains open. Today in the Democratic Party there is no leader equal to Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. There is no person who, with his personal qualities and program, would give a new sound to American liberalism.

And so for the time being it wins the democratic primaries in the USA ... Donald Trump.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.