Despite detailed policy pitches, 2020 Dem race still driven by name recognition

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — As the Democratic presidential field continues to grow, so does the pile of in-depth policy proposals offered up by candidates and often ignored by the media, but experts say the plans set forth now could impact the direction of the party in 2020 even if their authors drop out of the race long before then.

In recent weeks, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has called for taxing the extremely wealthy, offering universal child care, jailing CEOs for negligence, breaking up giant tech companies, and getting rid of the filibuster. Last week, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro introduced a detailed immigration policy proposal, and the week before that, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., unveiled a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., laid out an ambitious plan for raising teacher pay nationwide. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., has been counting on a paid family leave plan to distinguish herself from the pack.

Meanwhile, more than half of Democratic primary voters are supporting two white men older than President Donald Trump—Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Vice President Joe Biden—one of whom has not even announced he is running.

The Morning Consult weekly Democratic primary tracking poll has Biden leading the pack with 33 percent of the vote and Sanders second with 25 percent. Harris and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke are tied for third with 8 percent, with Warren in fifth with 7 percent. The rest of the candidates in the field come in under 5 percent.

There are many reasons for all this, most obvious name recognition. Biden held the second highest office in the nation for eight years and Sanders waged an unexpectedly long and drawn out primary fight with Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“They’re just known. Their support is baked in from just a name ID standpoint,” said Michael Cohen, founder and CEO of the Cohen Research Group and an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California.

This is not abnormal, nor should it necessarily be concerning for the rest of the field. According to Cohen, most primary voters will not engage much with the race until the debates begin this summer.

“This isn’t real yet. It looks like a real campaign, but it’s not real for most people,” he said.

Candidates are currently jockeying for early donors and campaign staff, and as fundraising figures for the first quarter of 2019 trickle in, many female and minority candidates still seem to be struggling to break through. Klobuchar and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., each announced Monday they raised about $5 million, less than a third of the $18 million Sanders raked in and well below O’Rourke ($9.4 million) and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg ($7 million). Harris is a notable exception, drawing $12 million in donations from 138,000 individual donors.

Some on the left blame undercurrents of sexism and racism they see in the media and the electorate that allows even less prominent white male candidates like O’Rourke and Buttigieg to attract more attention than female and minority candidates who are saying and doing similar things.

“Another day, another morning show news package that only mentions four white men running for President. There was even a reference to Mayor Pete’s impressive fundraising that noted he’d been beaten by Bernie and Beto (but no mention of Kamala). Quite a news cycle,” said former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer Christina Reynolds on Twitter Monday.

According to New Hampshire-based progressive radio host Arnie Arnesen, Sanders and Biden do have an ingrained edge, but she expects that will change once voters familiarize themselves with the rest of the field.

“The white men do have an advantage, but the only reason they have an advantage is they’ve been around forever...,” Arnesen said. “It’s not that they represent the change we need. It’s that they’re familiar. They’re like Santa Claus.”

Massachusetts Democratic strategist Scott Ferson agreed familiarity is driving poll numbers at this point—when Hillary Clinton has been polled as a potential 2020 candidate, she often places near the top with Biden and Sanders. However, he is not confident a time will come when policy becomes paramount.

“People don’t actually care about policy, so it’s not surprising to me the most substantive candidates aren’t the ones who poll high or end up doing well,” Ferson said.

Several candidates have bulked up their websites with position papers on various topics. While he emphasized this is all quite useful for determining who is best prepared to be president, Ferson is skeptical it is making them any more likely to become president.

“When people want to load up their policy pages with a lot of issues, I tell them not to do that. It’s not helpful. It’s helpful to governing, but not to winning,” he said.

Even if they are not moving poll numbers, some insist the lesser-known candidates’ proposals are not disappearing into the ether.

“They’re driving the other candidates to respond to them...,” Arnesen said. “They’re setting the policy agenda other candidates are going to have to respond to.”

Perhaps most emblematic of this effect may be Warren, who has made a habit of dropping detailed policy proposals on economic and social issues, at times forcing her more high-profile opponents to grapple with difficult questions even if she cannot seize the spotlight herself.

“Elizabeth Warren decided from the get-go she was running for president as the teacher/professor,” Arnesen said. “She wasn’t running as a political hack. She wasn’t running to raise money... If she loses, her ideas will continue to resonate.”

After Warren aggressively argued for eliminating the legislative filibuster at the National Action Network conference Friday, Sanders took a firm stance against doing so in a HuffPost interview Monday, coming down on the opposite side from many progressive activists who see it as an obstacle to achieving the ambitious agenda he has proposed.

“Donald Trump supports the ending of the filibuster. So, you should be a little bit nervous if Donald Trump supports it,” Sanders said.

In a “Meet the Press” interview Sunday, Buttigieg appeared to echo Warren’s nuanced take on capitalism, stressing that America must practice “democratic capitalism.”

Yet Warren herself is trailing behind the top-tier candidates and reportedly struggling to raise money. While she has higher name recognition than some of her rivals, much of that is due to the controversy over her claim of Native American heritage and President Trump’s frequent mockery of it.

“For a little bit, she actually had a lot of attention,” Cohen said. “She had to navigate her background issues... It seemed like it didn’t go well. She sort of stumbled over that and never really cleared the bar.”

For better or worse, though, this is an exceedingly long race. The first primary debate is still more than two months away and it will likely be well over a year before Democrats know who their nominee is, but candidates need to perform well enough now to stay afloat until the field eventually shrinks to a more reasonable size.

“I keep thinking about the tortoise and the hare,” Arnesen said. “Some people build slowlyI am Team 2020. I have five or six candidates I really admire.”

She encouraged Democratic voters to make donations to several candidates they like because some will inevitably be eliminated early in the process.

“You can pick a half dozen and get them far enough to make sure one of them is on the debate stage,” she said.

For now, Cohen said the best candidates can do is take advantage of any opportunities they get to generate excitement and attention, as O’Rourke did when he staged a counterrally against Trump’s rally in El Paso. He noted Buttigieg and Harris have been particularly effective at parlaying CNN town hall appearances into a burst of momentum.

“If you’re running for president, you should be creating moments. You shouldn’t be waiting for them to happen to you,” Cohen said.

This week, five candidates will have that shot to make news in front of CNN audiences, with Gillibrand, Castro, Washington Gov Jay. Inslee, spiritual book author Marianne Williamson, and businessman Andrew Yang all set to appear at town halls.

Experts expect the Democratic herd will be culled this summer once voters get a look at candidates in a series of multi-night primary debates. There is little incentive for anyone to back out before that, or really even before the primaries and caucuses begin next February—as long as can raise enough money to keep the lights on and their staffs paid—because that is when the campaign gets real.

“The greatest movement is going to happen in that month before Iowa,” Ferson said.

Although some on the left have been discouraged by the lack of traction candidates’ policy positions are getting, others are encouraged by the ideas being put on the table.

“There’s lot of really interesting ideas coming out of the Democratic field if you look at it holistically... It works toward a pretty exciting unified Democratic platform if we can hold it together,” Ferson said.