The Virginia governor is looking at a run for president but more diverse candidates may flourish in a quickly swelling field

Terry McAuliffe turned a red state blue – but is he the face of the future for Democrats?

Terry McAuliffe turned a red state blue – but is he the face of the future for Democrats?

Riding a wave of election victories driven by women and minority candidates and voters, the Democratic party now must choose its next standard-bearer, the candidate who would defeat Donald Trump in a 2020 presidential showdown.

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Perhaps noted white man Terry McAuliffe?

The former Virginia governor and longtime party fixture made a case for his potential candidacy on CNN on Sunday, dismissing State of the Union host Dana Bash’s challenge that he was being unrealistic about his home-party appeal, “considering that you are a white man”.

“What do voters want? They want results,” McAuliffe said, ignoring the premise of the question and going on to pitch himself as a “southern governor” who helped lead a Democratic transformation in his state and supported Democratic policy priorities such as healthcare access for all.

“I’m obviously looking at [a run],” he said, adding: “I have got time. I have got a lot of great relationships … I have 40 years of working for this party. I have plenty of friends in many states. So I don’t have to rush into this.

“But … here’s the message for Democrats. They don’t want an angry liar in the White House. They want someone who is compulsively optimistic and realistic. And the Democrats have to lay out an agenda of success of what we plan to do.”

As the ranks of potential Democratic candidates swell – and leading names such as senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kristen Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren build campaign machinery – the question of which candidate is the appropriate face for the party in the upcoming election cycle has sharpened.

Some Democratic advisers, pointing to Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, have urged the party toward a pick such as McAuliffe or former vice-president Joe Biden, candidates seen in some quarters as having potentially strong crossover appeal among independents and moderate Republicans.

Opposing counsel within the party, however, describes that view as exactly wrong, pointing to Barack Obama’s consecutive victories as evidence that the candidate matters more than identity politics and pointing out that Trump’s 2016 win was a warning to avoid the establishment.

By this view, a candidate such as McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman who ran campaigns for both Clintons, does not represent the future of a party with which 56% of women, 84% of black voters and 63% of Hispanic voters identify, according to Pew.

The crowd of Democrats making preparations for 2020 offers voters a range of options. Harris, a former state attorney general of Jamaican and Indian Tamil descent, has already selected a campaign manager and has narrowed her choice of campaign headquarters down to two cities, the New York Times reported.

Booker, the first African American senator from New Jersey, is building operations in the early voting state of Iowa, as the Guardian reported in September.

Warren, the first woman US senator from Massachusetts, is hiring staff and reviewing her past writings and speeches for vulnerabilities of the kind that could emerge under the thousand-watt glare of a presidential campaign.

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Gillibrand, who replaced Clinton in the Senate, is considering campaign manager candidates, the Times said.

Half-a-tier below is Beto O’Rourke, the Texas representative who mounted an unexpectedly robust challenge to US senator Ted Cruz in 2018, and who is seen as capable of energizing the Democratic party grassroots while possibly repeating his trick of appealing to Republicans.

Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator, has demonstrated broad electoral appeal with particular strength among voters looking outside the establishment.

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Early polling of the potential Democratic field has found Biden ahead of the pack, although that result reflects the longtime senator and former vice-president’s unusually strong name recognition.

Looming over the selection process is Trump, whose anemic approval rating of about 41%, on average, makes him an extremely vulnerable incumbent.

But the president’s nasty political style could inform voter opinions about the best candidate to take him on: a sunny figure like Booker, who might hew to the high road, or a more enthusiastic scrapper such as Warren or Harris, both of whom have leveled damaging critiques at the president.

If none of those options fits, the answer may be waiting in the wings.

“So my argument would be, I am a governor,” McAuliffe said on CNN. “I was a southern governor, and at a time of very few statewide elected officials. And I took a state that was red. All statewide were Republicans, and when I left office, all Democrats. We are now a blue state.

“Why? Because we delivered on the things that matter to the voters in this country.”