The Curse of the 2020 Democratic Presidential Field
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https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-curse-of-the-2020-democratic-presidential-field/
The Forgotten Candidates of 2020
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” It’s a line from The Dark Knight that “plagues” director Christopher Nolan. Whether your inclination is to see the Democrats who ran for president in the 2020 cycle as heroes or villains, it is safe to say that many of those aspiring presidents lived long enough to become something completely different from what they intended back in those pre-Covid days.
Four years later — really five, since so much of the action in that cycle took place in 2019 — a slew of the major players from that field ended up in places and roles they didn’t expect, often experiencing disappointing fates that they didn’t foresee. The cavalcade of frustration and woe that you are about to read might just make the next crop of politicians who have more ambition than genuine standout talent think twice about running in 2028.
Biden will be remembered as a president. The other seeming big winner from the 2020 election, Kamala Harris, will be remembered as “the other woman who lost to President-Elect Trump.”
Still around, still involved in legislating, but having faded to the background — that’s been the fate of a lot of the Democratic senators who ran for president in the 2020 cycle — Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and both Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado.
These senators still pop up on cable news and the Sunday shows. It’s not unthinkable that one or more of them will run for president again someday, but no one is clamoring for it. (Notably, none of them were seriously considered as Harris’s running mate this summer.) They’ve been reduced to faces in the crowd again, “Oh, it’s that guy, whatshisname” status. Virginia senator and former Hillary Clinton running mate Tim Kaine seems quite comfortable in his return to relative obscurity, making fun of how no one remembers him in a recent Saturday Night Live sketch. You wonder if these five are quite as satisfied with returning to their status as “just another Democratic senator.”
Best line?
Eric Swalwell is also still in Congress, still representing Alameda, Calif., and unlikely to worry about ever losing his seat in the D+22 district. The most interesting thing to happen to him in the interim was the revelation that he was, as far as we know, the only member of Congress to penetrate Chinese intelligence.
