New Democratic Candidates
Recently Joe Biden has publicly stated that he will be running for president in the democratic primary, and Pete Buttigieg has seen a spike in interest following a break out town hall performance.
Former Vice President and former Senator from Delaware Joe Biden, 76, announced his intent to run for President of the United States on Thursday, April 25 in a three-minute video. Biden served on the US Senate from 1973 to 2009 representing Delaware. Biden has taken a much stronger stance on attacking current President Donald Trump. Some of Biden’s policy goals, according to his website, is combating climate change, reforming the criminal justice system, fixing the immigration system and helping the middle class.
In the 2020 general election the midwestern working middle class will be essential for democrats looking to see an electoral college win over Donald Trump. In 2016, Trump won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by less than one percent, and if the democrats can gain these three states in the upcoming election their road to victory will be practically layed out for them, and the major demographic in these states is the working middle class.
Mayor of South Bend Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, has seen massive gains in polls and attention since he appeared in a CNN town hall on March 10. Buttigieg, 37, is a young mayor from a small city in Indiana, and became the first openly gay mayor of Indiana, and is also the first openly gay politician to run for president. Buttigieg is a Harvard graduate and speaks seven languages, and has seen his popularity go from zero percent before the town hall to currently being at around six percent in national polls (which puts him ahead of senators Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Kirsten Gillibrand), and some polls have Buttigieg in third place behind Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.
New arrivals
There are ten other new candidates who have recently joined the democratic primary race. These candidates are Michael Bennet, Senator from colorado, Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York Steve Bullock, the governor of Montana, Mike Gravel, former senator from Alaska, John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado, Jay Inslee, senator from Washington, Wayne Messam, mayor of Miriam Florida, Seth Moulton, representative from Massachusetts,Tim Ryan, representative from Ohio, Eric Swalwell, representative from California.
What to expect from the democratic debate
The upcoming democratic debate will take place in June, and the Democratic National Committee laid out two requirements for qualifying for the debate stage: either have 65,000 individual donors to your campaign or reach at least one percent in three polls certified by the DNC. The DNC said that it will only be accepting 20 candidates spread over two nights, and those candidates who have reached both requirements will be given priority.
Currently, the candidates who have met at least one of these requirements, according to The Washington Post as of May 16, are Steve Bullock, John Delaney, Kirsten Gillibrand, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Tim Ryan, Eric Swalwell, Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang.