Make no mistake, President Trump’s State of the Union address was the kickoff for his 2020 re-election campaign, and so far I’ve yet to see a Democrat who can beat him.

During the partial government shutdown over whether to fund Trump’s wall on the southern border, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that the president deliver the annual address alone, from the Oval Office.

I can see why.

Alone, Trump is a frump. In front of a crowd, he’s electric.

No matter what you think of Trump’s message, his delivery was impressive. He stayed on script and kept referring to everyday heroes in the gallery, thus forcing the Democrats to stand and cheer.

It was populist theater, where presence and impression trump content.

And the overnight polling after the speech showed that once again, he connected with voters, at least enough voters to make him a 2020 favorite.

You can’t say the same for the Democratic contenders. They all have impressive credentials, winning personalities and positive messages, but none displays the “people personality” that our media-savvy president has mastered.

Nearly four years ago, when Trump announced his candidacy for president, I said he had a winning hand. He still does.

So we Democrats really have our work cut out for us.

If he carefully picks his fights, Trump can turn the light back on Democrats and force us to defend our progressive wing’s “socialist” positions like health care for all, housing for all and guaranteed income.

Our candidates will have to pull further and further to the left to satisfy the party’s activist constituency, much like Republicans did in response to the rise of the Tea Party, and probably with the same results.

Our congressional efforts in 2018 benefited from Republican candidates’ inability to defend their relationship with Trump. But Trump can defend his relationship with himself very effectively.

Let’s just hope Democrats can figure out that we need to go beyond the left and motivate voters across the board, just as midterm congressional campaigns did under Nancy Pelosi’s leadership.

We know we can win California and New York. The question is: Can we win the states we lost in 2016, or do we preach to the choir in an empty church?

The Franken Rule: The ghost of former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken has descended on Virginia, and there will be hell to pay.

When Franken was forced to resign by fellow Democrats over a photo of him leering over a sleeping woman taken years before he was elected, it reset the bar for everyone.

Now, the Democrats in Virginia who were on the threshold of securing that state for the next presidential run are in total disarray.

They have a governor and attorney general who did themselves up in blackface years before they took office, ancient mistakes by people who apparently have had otherwise exemplary careers. They now find themselves in front of media firing squads, thanks to the Franken Rule.

The party could survive that, except for a wild card that’s much, much worse: They have a lieutenant governor accused of sexual assaults by two women.

If all three Democrats go down, a right-wing Republican speaker of the House stands to take over the governor’s office — and who knows where the state goes in 2020.

For lease: Let’s hope San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s call for a vacancy tax can motivate landlords to be a bit more accommodating about all the empty commercial retail space downtown.

It’s really alarming when a third of the stores on Sutter Street have for-lease signs rather than displays in their windows.

It’s even worse to see public garages, many of them financed by revenue bonds, with the first-floor retail space vacant because the trustees are acting like for-profit landlords.

Walking tour: The shutdown of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge on Thursday turned downtown San Francisco into one big parking lot.

Every block was crammed with cars and buses. Pedestrians jammed the sidewalks. Even the California Street cable cars shut down.

Yet, as I walked and walked, I did not hear one shout or horn blast in anger.

It was truly amazing.

Almost as amazing as football-size chunks of concrete falling from a state-owned bridge.

But hey, that’s the Bay Area.

Want to sound off? Email: wbrown@sfchronicle.com