WASHINGTON, May 31 (Xinhua) -- Everyone and their grandmother seems to be vying for the Democratic nomination to run against the party's arch enemy -- the sitting president Donald Trump. Experts said they expect a frenzied fight -- an alley cat brawl with biting, scratching and fur flying in all directions.
Indeed, Democrats are seeing the biggest electoral field in recent memory with 23 candidates now vying for the 2020 Democratic ticket. Experts say the field is the most crowded in modern U.S. history.
"Democrats will face a contentious primary battle due to the large number of candidates," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.
"They think the president is taking America in the wrong direction and want to be the person who moves the country back to where it was before the 2016 election," West said.
WHY NOT ME
Candidates range from political veterans to newbies such as Chinese-American Andrew Yang, a startup founder who has been into politics since not long ago. The two early front runners are 2016 Democratic nomination candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, who lost against Hillary Clinton in a race that many believed was rigged, and former vice president Joe Biden.
In terms of campaign finance, Sanders is clearly ahead, with over 18 million U.S. dollars raised within 41 days, even before his first fundraiser in this election cycle on Saturday in the U.S. state of California.
His openly socialist stance has gained him favor with millennials who are saddled with student debt and are feeling the sting of high living costs in major U.S. cities such as New York.
The candidates will appear in the first of the season's debates in Miami on June 26-27 and scramble to stand out in the crowd.
Christopher Galdieri, assistant professor at the Saint Anselm College, told Xinhua the field is so broad partly because candidates simply see an opportunity.
"Given how low Trump's approval ratings have been a lot of folks are looking at 2020 and asking 'Why not me?' And partly because the barriers are lower than (those) in the past, thanks to social media and online fundraising. I doubt all (the candidates) will maintain viable campaigns by the time the primaries come around," Galdieri said.
TOO FAR TO THE LEFT
West said that for Democrats, there is a risk that they will move "too far to the left, as the party base hates Trump and wants to see him out of office."
Although Trump has been upsetting trade partners and offending NATO allies, with the U.S. jobless rate at its lowest in decades and an economy stronger than it has been in decades, he is in a good position for re-election as long as it holds up through next year, West said.
The economy usually takes precedence over all other issues during election years, experts said.
Moreover, history dictates that incumbent presidents usually win, and experts said that can also be true in Trump's case.
"Trump's base of support has been with him almost from the start," Galdieri said. "The 2020 election could have the highest turnout in a century and be a matter of electoral trench warfare, with each party trying to identify and turn out as many supporters as it can muster."
"This is rather unusual, often one party is demoralized and so many members stay home. But that wasn't the case in 2018 and probably won't be in 2020 either," Galdieri said.
But once the dust clears and a winner emerges, experts expect the party to unite around the victor, with the shared goal of beating Trump, who is deeply unpopular among Democrat's base.
"I expect the party to unite quickly in the spring once it becomes clear who has the most delegates because all Democrats share the goal of defeating Donald Trump. The candidates will forget their small issue differences in light of the chasm between Trump and Democrats," West said.
