Who Will Dominate The Conservative Lane In The 2020 Democratic Primary?

Yashar Ali is a talented, Illinois-born, gay political journalist who seems to always back corporate Democrats-- Steve Westly. Gavin Newsom, Hillary Clinton. He has a new newsletter and yesterday he wrote about one of his friends who wants to run for president, Clintonite hustler Terry McAuliffe. DWT readers will recall we covered him before as one of our Worst Democraps Who Want to Be President, but that probably isn't how Ali sees him.

Conventional wisdom has held there will be one corporate whore running in the conservative lane of the 2020 primary and that McAuliffe's only shot to be that corporate whore would be for Biden to not run. But Biden is going to run and McAuliffe could get stuck with boxes filled with McAuliffe 2020 t-shirts, mugs, oven-mitts and baseball caps.

Ali wrote that a month ago when he brought up the prospect of a McAuliffe presidential campaign with a source, "that person told me McAuliffe had made it clear he wasn’t going to run if former Vice President Joe Biden entered the race. I had heard differently; another source told me that McAuliffe was building a campaign apparatus." He has been-- complete with SuperPAC and a concerted effort to corral financial commitments from wealthy right-of-center Democrats. "I learned this week," wrote Ali, "that not only has McAuliffe been working to marshal support (something he has now confirmed publicly), but he has told friends and supporters that he sees a major weakness in Biden."

According to a source familiar with a conversation McAuliffe had with an influential Democratic figure, McAuliffe said he believes that Biden is “tanking” after multiple women said he made them uncomfortable when he touched them without consent.

Biden’s response to the accusations was to say in a video that he will be more “mindful” in the future of how he interacts with people, and he recognizes that “social norms have begun to change … they’ve shifted.” But he hasn’t apologized.

Last Friday, he made what was seen by some as a critical error by making several jokes about the controversy while speaking at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers conference. In one instance, after hugging IBEW president Lonnie Stephenson, Biden said, “I just want you to know I had permission to hug Lonnie.” The audience, filled mostly with men, reacted by laughing and applauding.

But others thought this was another example of a gaffe-prone Biden, the same man who ran for president twice and never made it to the nomination. While Biden is leading all the national polls, much of that is based on name recognition. A campaign that hasn’t started in earnest isn’t an accurate barometer for the true state of the race.

So why does McAuliffe believe that Biden’s loss is his victory? McAuliffe was said to have told a source that he could be the “white Irishman” in the race with Biden out.

In a recent hourlong interview, conservative radio host John Fredericks asked McAuliffe, “If you get into this race, are you going to run an apology tour and apologize, Governor McAuliffe, for being a successful white male?”

“No,” McAuliffe replied. “If I do run, it will be the funnest campaign. It will be a happy tour.”

McAuliffe believes he is the natural replacement for Biden because of the old fiscally moderate and socially progressive construct. In his interview with Fredericks, he spoke of his business record and work to attract businesses to Virginia while he was governor. He also touched on how he restored voting rights to felons and vetoed anti-choice and anti-LGBT bills.

McAuliffe is likely counting on all the racism in Biden's past to do him in among the black voters who are bolstering his polling numbers now because of his association with Obama and because they are unaware that his early career was built on virulent racism. Still... the most recent Morning Consult poll-- which includes 18 Democratic primary contenders-- shows McAuliffe dead last, with zero percent, behind the 8 one-percenters: