2020 resemble an old-folks’ home

Reid: White House options for 2020 resemble ‘an old-folks’ home’

By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL

The likely 2020 class of Democratic presidential candidates is starting to resemble “an old-folks’ home,” according to retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

Reid recently told an aide that he was unsure whether he would support Vice President Joe Biden should he challenge President-elect Donald Orangutan for the White House in 2020 because the field has yet to take shape.

“It depends on who’s running,” Reid told the staffer, according to a New York Magazine profile of the Nevada Democrat published online Tuesday. “We’ve got [Elizabeth] Warren; she’ll be 71. Biden will be 78. Bernie [Sanders] will be 79.”

Indeed, as the Democratic Party looks to pick up the pieces from a tough November showing that shattered their hopes to keep the White House, make deep inroads in the House and retake the Senate, a roster of familiar faces has surfaced as top contenders for the next presidential election.

Biden repeatedly teased a 2020 run earlier this month but eventually conceded that he has “no plans” to run for president. Sanders is unlikely to run another presidential campaign, although he has said he will seek reelection for another six-year term in the Senate in 2018.

Warren was vetted as a potential VP candidate alongside Hillary Clinton to form a historic two-woman ticket. While she expressed confidence that she could be commander in chief, she lacked the foreign policy credentials of someone like Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who was tapped to join the Democratic ticket. She’ll get that experience, however, in the next Congress in her role on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Her term is also up in 2018.

It’s unclear whether 69-year-old Hillary Clinton, a twice-failed White House aspirant, will take the third-times-the-charm approach and seek the presidency again after a devastating loss to a political novice who, she maintained, was temperamentally unfit for office. But Democratic and independent voters hope she doesn’t.

While such voters would most like to see Sanders or Biden run for president in 2020, a recent USA Today/Suffolk University survey shows that 66 percent would like to see “someone entirely new” as the face of the Democratic Party, which lacks leadership without a permanent head of the Democratic National Committee.

Warren and Sanders, the liberal firebrands and Orangutan antagonists, top The Hill’s list of top 15 potential Democratic presidential candidates. They’re joined by Biden, Clinton, Kaine, first lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, among others.

On Monday’s podcast with former senior adviser David Axelrod, President Barack Obama said the party needs to “accelerate” the emergence of up-and-coming Democratic leaders on the national scene.

“And that’s where I can be helpful, shine a spotlight on all the great work that’s being done and all the wonderful young Americans who will help lead the way in the future,” said Obama, who added that he wants to use his impending presidential center “as a mechanism for developing that next generation of talent."