Will Kamala Harris Be The DNC Presidential Nominee In 2020?

With Kamala Harris making her 2020 Presidential candidacy official, and the mainstream media doing their absolute best to paint her in the most favorable possible light, she has quickly become the front-runner in a very crowded field of Democrat candidates.  Myra Adams of Real Clear Politics lazily cobbled together five reasons why she thinks Harris will win the nomination:

• 1. Kamala Harris is a woman.
• 2. Kamala Harris is mixed race.
• 3. Kamala Harris: America’s new “role model.”
• 4. Barack Obama will help Harris with her campaign.
• 5. Kamala Harris has a strategic advantage over President Trump.

The DNC has already demonstrated that they will rig the primary for whoever they think has the best shot at winning – try telling Bernie Sanders that the process is fair.  Because of this, the first three reasons are basically DNC talking points, and surely Obama will help out whoever himself and the DNC colludes to nominate.  However, the weakest of all of Adams’s reasons was undoubtedly the last one:

If I am correct in believing that Harris is likely to win the nomination, how and when will Trump personally attack her? The fact that she is a non-white woman representing the nation’s largest state, Trump’s every word and tweet will be analyzed and scrutinized from the perspective of race and gender.

Harris’s very questionable political history includes using an extramarital affair to launch her career, as well as her near-constant funding by the same big tech and media conglomerates she claims she will regulate.  But Adams still implies that identity politics (which hasn’t stopped Trump in the past) will stop him this time around because Harris is a mixed race woman.  Perhaps the only thing more amusing that Adams’s conclusions is that RCP actually paid her to write them.

So, will Harris actually win the nomination?  The oddsmakers have her out in front, but not with much as much conviction as they did with Hillary in 2016.  Kamala currently is getting priced at between 21-25%, depending on where you look, with Cory Booker’s announcement moving him to between 6-10% at most bookmakers.  “The field” of remaining candidates fills out the remaining 2/3rds of the oddsmakers’ lines…

…and the most likely pair of candidates that can threaten Harris are Beto O’Rourke and Joe Biden, though the prospect of an unknown high-riser in the mold of Obama or Trump also remains.  But perhaps the biggest obstacle Harris faces is herself – against a DNC establishment that will prop up whoever they think can win, and sink whoever they think can’t.

As that pertains to the 2020 election, both the DNC’s and Trump’s chances will largely hinge on Florida and the “rust belt” swing states:

As previously covered by FMShooter, the states that will decide the 2020 election are Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania (with AZ, NC, and MN possibly in play as well).  Florida is by far the most pivotal of these states – the 2018 Senate/Gubernational elections in the state were won by 32,000/10,000 votes respectively, and over 1 million felons (a large blue voting bloc) have recently been added to the voter rolls via a 2018 ballot initiative.  A ton of campaigning is all but assured to occur in Florida by both major candidates in the state that may very well decide the election.

Florida is routinely referred to as the “gunshine” state due to the large contingent of pro-gun voters living there.  Harris has a lengthy political (and prosecutorial) career where she peddled an “assault weapons” ban, universal background checks, ERPOs, and a number of other anti-gun positions that are not conducive to a winning platform in Florida.  Even Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum, two anti-gun politicians in their own regard, weren’t nearly as aggressive as Harris is.

Her gun control platform is equally unpopular in rust belt states, as is Harris’s lax treatment of banks involved in mortgage fraud, heavy corporate funding and influence, and accusations of using her office to attack enemies and reward friends.  Her platform may work to pander to the DNC’s base, but it’s not exactly a pathway to victory in battleground states.

While Kamala could still win the nomination, the DNC could also be using her candidacy to test out which of their “extreme” positions will poll favorably in swing states, tailoring their “desired” candidate to the most popular platform.

Due to Harris’s background and the DNC’s evaluation of its own chances for victory, her nomination odds feel fairly priced at 21-25%.  Ultimately it is far more likely the Democrats choose someone else, as she just doesn’t offer them a decisive pathway to victory in key swing states.