ANALYSIS/OPINION:

So Joe’s gonna’ go, dontcha’ know. Pocahontas is gearing up, too. The newest race-baiters are getting ready. And ol’ Bernie is soaking his dentures in Polident (when he’s not yelling at those pesky kids to get off his lawn).

Yes, 2020 is right around the corner, people. Once we get past this midterm election in two weeks, it’s a flat-out blitz to Election Day 2020. Sure, no one cares (seriously, NO ONE CARES!), but that’s never stopped politicians from running for the White House before and, unfortunately, it won’t stop them now.

In fact, the Democrats are going to start having debates in a few months. Seriously. Not kidding.

“By the early spring at the latest, you’ll be seeing debates, and I think probably in the first quarter of 2019,” David Axelrod, a top adviser to former President Barack Obama, said on a recent podcast (yes, he has one). “I think the sense of urgency among Democrats and the sense of possibility among potential candidates is such that you’re going to see that.”

Of course, no one is running. No full-time, career politician will come out and say the words, “Sure, yeah, I’m running in 2020.” They say that stupid thing like, “I am not currently a candidate for the presidency” or “I am just happy to be …” blah, blah, blah.

But they’re running. They’re all running. We know they’re running, you know they’re running, so why the games? It’d be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

So let’s take a look at a few of the top dogs, the alphas, the cream of the Dem crop.

First, you gotta put Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermontistan independent, at the top of the list. The 77-year-old socialist from Brooklyn got aced out of the nomination in 2016 as the Hillary Clinton team stacked the deck. But the party has changed the rules so Uncle Bernie might have a chance this time around.

“Democratic Party officials, after a years-long battle between warring ideological wings, have agreed to sharply reduce the influence of the top political insiders known as superdelegates in the presidential nomination process,” The New York Times reported in August.

Under the new plan, superdelegates — set up to make sure the Establishment candidate breezes through — can cast substantive votes only in extraordinary cases such as contested conventions, and they won’t even get a vote in the first go-through.

Bernie’s making nine campaign stops in the coming month, but his support is cooling after his last whooping in 2016. So Democrats are turning to the new crop of candidates at their disposal.

Like that young kid from Delaware, Joe “Spring Chicken” Biden. He’s waaaay younger than Bernie. Joe’s only 75.

Biden knows he’s old, and he’s already trying to address the issue. “I think age is a totally legitimate thing to raise,” Biden says. “I think it’s totally appropriate for people to look at me and say, if I were to run for office again, ‘Well God darn, you’re old.’ Well chronologically, I am old.”

Chronologically speaking. But his hair and teeth implants make him look young so, hey, maybe it’s just Joe’s time.

Crazy Joe has been making all kinds of noises like he’s running. Heck, he turned the funeral of Sen. John McCain into a campaign speech, and only the most craven politicians would do something like that, right? And in a recent CNN poll, Biden drew support from 33 percent of those surveyed, with Sanders a distant second at 13 percent.

Sen. Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren is also getting ready. She’s been all over the news with her recent DNA test that showed — despite her longtime claims to the contrary — that she’s got virtually no American Indian blood in her. Yes, the test showed she’s 98.5 percent to 99.9 percent white. Poor Pocahontas. But she’s trying to kill off one of President Trump’s favorite attack lines, and for the liberal mainstream media, she’s put the issue to bed.

Then there’s Sen. Cory Booker, who pulled down 5 percent in the CNN poll. He’s already swung through Iowa with a high-profile speech at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Fall Gala. And he’s jumping on the “free everything” bandwagon championed by Mr. Sanders with his own plan to set up “opportunity accounts” to give lower-income children up to $50,000 to use for a down payment on a house or college tuition.

And there’s Sen. Kamala Harris, who, like Booker, used the recent confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to grandstand on a national stage. She’s already campaigned in Ohio and South Carolina and says she will “seriously take a look at” 2020 after the November elections.

“Seriously.”

The list of hopefuls drops off steeply after that. Yes, those are the front-runners for 2020.

Seriously.

⦁ Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at [email protected] and on [email protected]

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