Candidates of all stripes
Thirteen Democrats from all sorts of backgrounds have already announced their intention to stand for the party in the 2020 presidential election
Jay Inslee, the Democratic governor of Washington state, on Friday posted a video on social media called This is our moment, in which he puts forward his candidacy for the US presidency based on the fight against climate change.
Inslee is the 13th Democratic politician to announce an intention to stand for the 2020 presidential election, and the first to do so on a climate change ticket. There are still over 20 months until the election in which Donald Trump will seek re-election but the unending electoral cycle in the US is more unstoppable than ever.
Possibly what best encapsulates the current situation in the Democratic Party is a recent headline in Time Magazine: “The Biggest Field Yet. No Frontrunner. A Divided Base. Welcome to the 2020 Democratic Primary”.
It was a different story in 2016, when it was understood that former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, would be the candidate.
This time everything is up in the air. The range of possible candidates is huge in all senses. There are more women than ever, more representatives of minorities than ever, and a larger age gap than ever. By way of illustration, Inslee is only the second white heterosexual male to stand, a profile that was once the most common.
The other is Bernie Sanders, the veteran self-proclaimed socialist who, after standing down in favour of Clinton in 2016, has decided to have another go, and who has left an undeniable imprint on the Democratic Party.
This time there are candidates of all stripes, from the progressive Sanders to the moderate Amy Klobuchar, from the activism of Elizabeth Warren to Obama’s former Secretary of Housing of Mexican origin, Julián Castro, from Afro-Americans Kamala Harris and Cory Booker to the young gay mayor, Pete Butiggieg.