“Look at who’s running. I don’t see any of my colleagues who have been nasty in the past,” said Sen. Cory Booker (left). | Drew Angerer/Getty Images 2020 elections 2020 Democrats insist they adore one another 'We're nicer people' than the Republicans, says one Senate Democrat plotting a White House run.

As many as nine Democratic senators will soon be jostling for the right to take on President Donald Trump — a primary election that’s expected to be nasty, brutish and long.

But in the early days of the campaign, it’s been all sunshine and rainbows inside the Senate Democratic Caucus.


The flock of presidential hopefuls have not sparred at caucus lunches, according to multiple Senate Democrats, or attacked one another in the press. To the contrary, they’ve portrayed one another as long-time friends all working toward the common purpose of defeating Trump.

COUNTDOWN TO 2020 The race for 2020 starts now. Stay in the know. Follow our presidential election coverage. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

“Look at who’s running. I don’t see any of my colleagues who have been nasty in the past,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.Y.), who jumped into the presidential race earlier this month and is running on a message calling for mutual kindness and respect.

Booker had just praised Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for her presidential launch in whiteout conditions in a private conversation. He also recently exchanged playful tweets with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who’s making moves toward a White House run.

It’s anyone’s guess whether the chill vibe will last once the primary is fully joined and the competition for support intensifies. Vows to run positive attack-free campaigns often fall by the wayside once the stakes get real. But if they keep it up, it would defy expectations of an 18-month spectacle of workplace awkwardness and hostility — and offer a glaring contrast to the Republican slugfest in 2016 between four GOP senators who ran for president.

“We’re nicer people. I mean look who they produced,” Brown — one of a dozen senators interviewed for this story, including four announced 2020 candidates — said of Republicans and Trump. “Of course it will stay nice, what kind of answer do you think I’m going to give you?”

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, my friend. https://t.co/RJqt613KvH — Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) February 10, 2019

At least at this stage, Democrats seem intent on presenting a united front as an implicit rebuke to Trump and his penchant for trashing perceived enemies in both parties. The president, of course, has dubbed Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” over her claims to Native American heritage, and he’s called Booker a “horrible” former mayor of Newark, New Jersey. There’s also a concern that a Democratic bloodbath would only help Trump win a second term.

One private moment of affability came shortly after Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) announced for president in January. As she walked into a vote on the first floor of the Capitol, Gillibrand stopped to share a big hug with Warren, who had declared two weeks earlier.

Other displays of affection have been more public. When Booker got into the race early this month, Gillibrand sent him a tongue-in-cheek note on Twitter that she’d “be cheering you on — just, you know, not TOO hard.”

And when Klobuchar announced last weekend, Gillibrand chimed in again that she was “so excited to have three of my Senate sisters officially in the race for the presidency.”

“We are all friends first and we will all, hopefully, be friends after,” Gillibrand said in an interview. “I want one of us to be standing tall and shining. I care about all the people running.”

It may be unrealistic, but Warren said she hopes Democrats can keep things relatively civil during the primary.

“I don’t think it’s intentional in the sense that people are veering toward negativity and pulling themselves back. I think that people are genuinely happy to be talking about the kinds of changes that we think are important,” the senator said.

The gentle posture is a lot easier to adopt because the primary is so young. Doing battle this early, and with this many Democrats running or planning to get in, would not be productive, Democratic senators say. Booker, Klobuchar, Warren, Gillibrand and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) have all declared. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is expected to get in soon, and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) are thinking about it.

With the expected field so large, “It’s hard to pick out who is your ally and who is your foe,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

“They have one no. 1 priority and that is to make sure there’s a Democratic president,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who is close to many of the candidates. “They know whoever emerges, has to to be battle tested but not injured.”

Republicans scoff at the notion that Democrats will keep it up. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said there’s simply never been a primary race that didn’t eventually turn into a sparring match. He would know. Years before he ran for president but with speculation that he would, Rubio's immigration bill under attack from two other Republican senators that had White House ambitions, too: Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

The early jockeying among the three presaged a campaign that Trump won by obliterating anyone in his way.

"It’ll be unavoidable. First of all, the press will drive it in their questions. Second of all, at some point someone is a threat to you and you’re going to have to figure out a way to highlight differences,” Rubio said. “Elections are choices and choices are driven by differences.”

At least eight of the Democratic senators won’t end up as president, of course, and will likely have to work together in 2021. It took Cruz months to rehab his image within the Senate GOP after tangling not only with his presidential competitors, but also members of his own party that he used as a foil for his run.

That’s something Democrats are trying to avoid.

“They like each other and understand that every one of them has something like a 1 in 20 shot of being president,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).

The divisions within the sprawling Democratic Senate field are often subtle and below the radar compared to the battles over immigration and national security among Republicans running for president in 2016.

In part, that’s because Democrats are now in their fifth year of being in the Senate minority, and it’s easier to stay united when your party isn’t setting the agenda and is uniformly opposed to Trump’s priorities.

“I think we are all on some level [sharing] a common purpose. There’s an alignment,” Harris said.

But there are contrasts. Harris was one of three Democrats, and the only presidential contender, to oppose a bill last year that would have provided Trump billions for his border wall in exchange for protecting young, undocumented immigrants. Also last year, Warren laid into Democrats including Bennet who supported a bank deregulation bill.

Brown has declined to sign off on a Green New Deal and Medicare for All efforts that have drawn broad support from the presidential field. And Gillibrand’s call for Sen. Al Franken to resign in 2017 is still a topic of heated debate in the Democratic Caucus.

The 2020ers also split Thursday on a spending bill to avert a second government shutdown. Bennet, Brown, Klobuchar, Merkley and Sanders voted for the measure, while Gillibrand, Harris, Warren and Booker opposed it.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is also likely to find ways to divide Democrats on issues from support for Israel to environmental regulations.

One factor working in favor of collegiality is the diminished importance of superdelegates under reforms adopted by the party. The changes make endorsements from establishment players like senators less critical, and could ease jockeying for support from fellow Democratic senators.

“We’re in a sense less valuable,” said one Senate Democrat who is not running for president.

That group seems to shrink with each passing day.

"I'm going to start a support group for those of us who aren't” running, said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “We're going to meet in a very small room.”

