Elizabeth Warren

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is emerging as a leader contender for the 2020 Presidential election, even though it's still nearly four years away.

(J. Scott Applewhite)

The 2020 Presidential election is already underway, and the Democrats have wasted no time designing a way to lose it.

Their early frontrunner is Elizabeth Warren. This suggests Melania Trump could have eight years, and not just four, to decide whether she wants to live in the White House.

Warren is the latest example of a party that loves to listen to itself, rather than exploring why so many people got so fed up they turned to a man they didn't like or trust. This was fine when the Democrats were winning elections, but not now when they face an uphill battle to even keep their current numbers in the 2018 midterm elections, let alone dethrone Donald Trump in 20202.

Let's see: Ted Kennedy in 1980, Mike Dukakis in 1988, John Kerry in 2004. What part of "America doesn't want a Massachusetts liberal as President" don't they understand?

But here they go again, and regardless of whether it was right or wrong for the Senate to shut Warren up on the grounds of procedure, she is pointing her party even further toward a direction that failed them in 2016. It will not suddenly reverse course and help them in 2020.

Outside of the Northeast Corridor and California, Americans are tired of being told that if they disagree with the Democratic left, they are racists or bigots or just plain stupid. This is a political truth even though many of them are racists, bigots or just plain stupid.

But not all of them, not by a long shot. Democrats have to win that second group back. Bellowing at them and counting on a mea-culpa vote from Trump supporters risks a backlash that could turn the Democratic Party into total irrelevancy,

Those of us who live in Massachusetts get lured into thinking the national debate is, at least to some extent, reflected by our debate. It's not.

For decades, Republicans and a growing share of other voters wanted to raise questions about a social agenda branded "progressive," a label that suggested anyone who dared disagree with the execution of it (which is a very different issue than the intent) was bigoted or backward.

They were told to choose their words so carefully that the words lost meaning. They got tired of tap-dancing through political correctness and moreover, tired of having liberal Democrats wag their fingers and rebuke them for lacking compassion or brains.

This is why the Democrats have lost vast stretches of the South and West, where they should be competitive. It's why they are losing the Midwest, which has become the best regional gauge of shifting public mood, and even in the East, their grip is loosening.

Their 2020 strategy assumes Trump will ruin the country. That's hardly impossible, but if somehow he doesn't and we survive this assault on the Constitution, Trump will wind up looking like a much better President than he actually is.

Here's one example: experts predicted the stock market would plunge, but it hasn't. Sure, it still may, and we may still have a nuclear war by Thursday.

But if such things don't happen in their most dramatic form, Trump's style will suddenly look better than it deserves. Voters who heard political opportunists like Warren warn of doomsday will dismiss them as vote-seeking alarmists. Advantage, Trump.

The Democrats still seem willing to trust the same political bullying and fear tactics that worked so well for the Republicans. They are betting voters will admit they were wrong about Trump and seek refuge with a candidate who screams at them from the left with the same loud bellicosity that Trump does from the right.

Nobody listens to moderate, middle-ground voices of reason anymore, which is why they are ceasing to exist. The other day, Marco Rubio pleaded for civility in a speech that was downright patriotic, and America switched the channel.

Tim Kaine strikes me as someone who could appeal to the disenchanted middle that tossed in with Trump simply out of frustration with the Democratic left. Anyone remember who Tim Kaine is?

Maybe the Dems will find a candidate of nuance who capitalizes on Trump's spectacular flaws while expressing some understanding and even acceptance of why so many people were willing to take a risky chance with him. But nuance is not an easy sell, as Hillary Clinton found out whenever she tried to explain a crafted, thoughful philosophy while Trump was promising to build the Mexican wall and repeal Obamacare by Valentine's Day.

Even so, there is little political risk to encouraging candidates whose message is "we hear you,'' and opposed to "listen to us.'' The Warren people will support almost any Democrat as an alternative to Trump, unless Jill Stein decides to feed her ego again in 2020 and swallow up votes the Democrats need.

Instead, we get Warren, who carries the hope of people who think a more liberal, uncompromising Democratic politician will appeal to Americans who just rejected a liberal politician/candidate they found (incorrectly) too uncompromising.

Maybe the Democrats think the Electoral College will be abolished. They keep falling back on Clinton's hefty popular vote victory.

They assume losses in states they thought were theirs (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) were a blip, not signs of a trend. Going with Warren means starting the campaign with the forfeiture of 20 to 25 states with the hope their electoral vote total will still add up to 270.

What the Democrats' it's-us-or-Armegeddon strategy does not take into account is that a lot of people who voted for Trump are not suddenly willing to say they were wrong. They see Neil Gorsuch as a carrot to reasonable thinking, they don't see a whole lot wrong with Jeff Sessions and they see endless, scorching media criticisms of Steve Bannon and the rest of Trump's team as more evidence the media and other elites are still lecturing and try to manipulate the people, not listening to them.

Millions of people not only agree with Warren but are inspired by her, but millions of others will tune her out because they don't need the guilt trip from another Massachusetts liberal.

If the Democrats don't accept that, they will lose in 2020 as long as the next four years are merely bad and not catastrophic. If they want to win, they should start looking for a candidate very different than Elizabeth Warren, assuming she will let them.