Who will be the 2024 Democratic Nominee?
By Sean Chopra, Staff Writer
Typically, when a political party basks in the glory of one of their own winning the coveted White House seat, they breathe a big sigh of relief, not only because their candidate managed to secure victory, but because now they can spend considerable time and effort for the next eight years to find a suitable successor. This election however, is undoubtedly different. Joe Biden is well into his senior years, and at seventy-eight years of age, he will be the oldest first-term President in American history. Biden has often referred to himself as a “transition candidate,” a term born out of an openly expressed desire to pull the United States out of the Trump era and back to one of “decency” and “normalcy.” Unfortunately, the combination of these factors during this tumultuous time points to the very real possibility that President Biden will not run for a second term. Leading us to the critical question: who will be the Democratic Party’s nominee for President in 2024?
Kamala Harris
Let us begin by analyzing the most obvious choice. Just recently elected as the Vice-President of the United States to Biden, Harris would instantly become the front-runner for the nomination if Biden term-limited himself. On paper, she is the perfect candidate: a female of color, an excellent debater, and a capable campaigner who has the ability to reach voters of color in a way not seen since President Obama. Nonetheless, concerns still exist regarding whether she is too liberal and could potentially turn away moderate voters who backed Trump in 2016 before switching to Biden in 2020. She may also have problems with her own base, many of whom are not thrilled with her past experience as the attorney general of California, in particular her record on marijuana and mandatory minimums. Still, as of this moment, prior to her term as Vice President even commencing, Kamala Harris is the current favorite for the 2024 Democratic Nomination for President.
Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders
Heroes to the Progressive Left, both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would be among the frontrunners for the nomination. However, both candidates have weighty shortcomings. First, Bernie Sanders would be eighty-three years old by 2024, and there is concern as to whether or not he has another campaign left in him. Warren would not face the same age problem as Sanders, being that she is eight years younger, however, her lackluster performance in the 2020 primaries raises doubts towards her ability to connect with minorities and voters without a college degree. Although Warren and Sanders are viable candidates, they may find their candidacy for the 2024 Presidential nomination short lived due to how difficult it is to win a national election as a liberal in a center-right country– something the DNC would no doubt take into heavy consideration.
Pete Buttigieg/Amy Klobuchar/Cory Booker/Beto O’Rourke
Let’s call this next group the “2020 rewatchables”, as they all ran for President in the 2020 cycle. Mayor (now Secretary of Transportation) Pete is a great public speaker and very smart, but he is inexperienced (even with this cabinet post he would be less experienced than virtually every other candidate) and does not appeal to black and minority voters, as evidenced by his abysmal performance with them in the primaries. In fact, being openly gay arguably hurts him with minorities, given that Hispanics and Africans Americans are less likely than whites to support gay marriage and gay rights.
While Klobuchar, in contrast to Buttigieg, has years of experience in politics, she fails to create the necessary excitement to drive voters to the polls. There is no group that she would engerize. She is not liberal enough to appeal to most young voters, and she performed very poorly with minorities in 2020. Her base would be college educated white women, but even here she would face stiff competition from Senator Warren and Vice-President Harris. Now, the one lane she would have would be to appeal to older Democrats as the white, more moderate alternative for the other candidates, and she did prove this is possible with her performance in New Hampshire.
Cory Booker is well-spoken, incredibly bright, and experienced in multiple levels of government. However, his record is one full of inconsistencies. He began his political career as a moderate, even supporting Republican ideas like school vouchers and entitlement reform. Once he ran for President however, he quickly abandoned his centrist views, instead opting to join with Bernie Sanders and endorsing “Medicare for All”. This record makes it difficult to assemble a base of support, as it is very difficult to know where he actually stands on the issues.
Beto O’Rourke began his career as a moderate democrat, largely appealing to white suburbanites. However, similar to Senator Booker, once he ran for President, he made a lurch leftwards, specifically with his stance on guns, which would be a problem in trying to win conservative Democrats in the Rust Belt.
If Joe Biden elects to not seek a second term, the Democratic party would have to find his successor, and with them, the path forward for the party. This next nominee could solidify the Democrats as a party of the center-left, or could plunge them forward as the party of liberals and hyper-progressives.
Sean Chopra ’24 studies in the college of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at chopra.s@wustl.edu.