CNN's Monthly Power Rankings: November, 2018

CNN is out with their November Monthly Power Rankings for potential Democratic presidential nominees, and after two months of no change in spots 1-5, this month things look a little different:

1. Kamala Harris
2. Elizabeth Warren
3. Joe Biden
4. Amy Klobuchar
5. Cory Booker
6. Bernie Sanders
7. Julian Castro
8. Steve Bullock
9. Sherrod Brown
10. Beto O'Rourke

Michael Bloomberg gets the Honorable Mention spot this month. CNN explains the rankings here. 

Looking at things through a different lens, political scientist Jonathan Bernstein has some thoughts about who is more and less likely to actually get the nomination. He groups the candidates into four categories: Famous Older Politicians, Famous Non-Politicians, Current and Former Mayors and Representatives, and Governors and Senators:

It’s not really true that midterm elections kick off the next presidential campaign. After all, Democrats have been running for president for nearly two years now. They’ll continue doing so over the next few months without much change, except that some folks who were running for other offices until last week felt obliged to claim that they weren’t interested in the presidency and can now drop that pretense.

Even so, many in the media see the midterms as a useful marker. We’ve had another round of Top Candidate lists from CNN and FiveThirtyEight and the Fix, among others. There’s been at least one new poll. So it’s worth thinking about who might be serious contenders.

We don’t know which of the 30-some candidates who are currently running for 2020 will still be running in 2020. And because we’re in the “invisible primary” period, it can be hard to tell even who is currently running. Aspiring candidates sometimes offer public signals — going to Iowa and New Hampshire, publishing a book, establishing an organization — but even those can be misleading, and some candidates who are pursuing support behind the scenes stay less visible than others.

That makes any ranking of potential nominees somewhat arbitrary at this point. So instead of critiquing those lists, I’m going to briefly go over the four categories I’ve been using to keep track of the candidates.

First are the famous older politicians, notably Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden. They’re the ones who top those early polls. I still think it’s highly unlikely that anyone from this pot wins the nomination. I could be wrong. But I just don’t see evidence that their poll standing — which is likely the product of name recognition rather than solid support — is matched by enthusiasm from party actors. 

Second are famous non-politicians, such as former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz or the celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti. After being wrong about Trump’s nomination, I won’t definitively count anyone out this time around. But again I see no interest in this entire category from party actors. I’m not even convinced that Democratic voters are all that interested.

Then come the current and former mayors and representatives. There are a whole bunch of these. Could they do it? Sure. But there are reasons that no mayor has come close to a Democratic nomination in the modern era and that the closest any member of the House got — Richard Gephardt, in 1988 — wasn’t really all that close. Why? Representatives generally cultivate narrow constituencies, and often champion local interests. That makes it harder for them to transition to national campaigning. Mayors have to answer to so many overlapping and competing interests, many of which don’t correspond well with the national party coalition, that it’s hard for them to avoid creating serious enemies within the party. Perhaps someone from this group can break through and compete anyway. But there are significant structural challenges in their way.

If all that is correct, and if history is any guide, then the most likely nominee will be one of the governors or senators who appear to be running. That still leaves a pretty big group, including Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Elizabeth Warren and almost a dozen more. Some of them, presumably, will drop out by this spring, either because they were never very serious to begin with or because they could take a hint that party actors weren’t interested. But it’s this group that in my view deserves the most attention. How seriously are they running? What signs are there of broader support? That’s what to watch.

While the midterms may not mark the beginning of the campaign, this is the time that party actors — politicians, campaign professionals, activists, donors and so on — can really make a difference. They may or may not be able to control nominations (I think they generally can, Trump notwithstanding). But they certainly can influence them, up to the point of knocking out early candidates (such as Scott Walker in 2016 or Tim Pawlenty in 2012). So if you want to follow the presidential nominations — and especially if you want a significant say — this is the time to get to it.

Days until the presidential election: 718