Road To 2020

A guide to winning the wildest Democratic primary in a generation.

- Molly Ball

ALMOST A YEAR BEFORE THE FIRST VOTES OF THE 2020 presidential contest, Democratic candidates are all over the map. There’s Elizabeth Warren in a drafty warehouse in Des Moines, Iowa, boasting to more than 1,000 people about forcing out a bank CEO. In South Carolina, Cory Booker’s in a college auditorium bringing the crowd to tears with his tale of the murder of a young boy from the Newark, N.J., projects. Sherrod Brown’s in an Ohio union hall, wondering in his raspy baritone if his party has lost touch with Middle America.

The 2020 Democratic primary will be unprecedented. The field is likely to be the largest in history, there’s no front runner in sight, and the stakes could hardly be higher. It’s not just that many Democrats argue Donald Trump is a threat to American democracy. The party’s very identity is up for grabs, as a vast and historically diverse crop of candidates brings big, new ideas to a demanding, divided base. “The Democratic Party is going through a very large transformation,” says party operative Simon Rosenberg, who’s backed the winning candidate in every primary since 1988 but has no favorite this time. “The era of Clinton and Obama is ending and ceding to a new set of dynamics. A new Democratic Party is being forged in front of our eyes.”