Democrats Explore Their Options (with Clifford Vickrey)

This chapter kicks off our examination of the 2020 Democratic nomination process. We dissect the exploratory phase of the campaign when potential candidates tested the waters to assess their chances. We systematically identify the most prominent prospective candidates and detail how feedback from party elites shaped their decisions to enter the race, sidelining many prominent figures who could have posed serious challenges to Biden’s candidacy. We conclude by detailing the full field of participants in the 2020 race, situating them in the ideological factions within which they built out their campaigns.