Dukakis 1988 and Rubio 2020

Dukakis 1988:

There are a lot of folks who seem to think that there is an inevitable correlation between low turnout in the primaries and the outcome of the GE and that it means the Democrats are in big trouble. I suggest that looking at the historical record rather than agenda-spun predictions might be useful.

1988 looks a lot like 2016: one party had a multi-candidate fight for the nomination with four candidates splitting around 23 million primary votes. The other party had essentially a two person race, with only 13 million votes cast during the nominating process. The first party was the Democrats who had a Dukakis, Jackson, Gore, and Gephardt fighting for the nomination . The second party was the repubs, who had basically a Bush-Dole fight.

Despite the fact that nearly twice as many voters participated in the primary process on the Democratic side, Dukakis was smoked by Bush. Why? Because the contending factions on the Democratic side never fully came together (and Dukakis was a lousy candidate to boot --easily vilified by the repubs).

So what does that have to do with Rubio 2020?

The repubs are coming apart at the seams. Romney is, reportedly, going to make a speech vowing not to support Trump if he's the repub nominee. Whether the repubs are freaking out about Trump because they worry he's going to win or are afraid he will lose is largely irrelevant. They are mounting a last ditch hail mary pass to stop him. But in reality, that hail mary pass is really a white flag of surrender. With prominent repubs announcing that they'll refuse to support Trump, Trump's chances of success in the General are greatly diminished. And if the hail mary was to succeed, the repubs still face a bitterly divided party - the Trump-ites aren't going to respond well to having the nomination pulled from them by the establishment repubs they despise.

And that takes us to Rubio 2020. At this point, my guess is that a lot of repubs have decided to play the long game. Lose in 2016, thereby discrediting Trump for the future. And nominate Rubio in 2020 to go after an incumbent Democratic president. Repubs have seen what happened to Christie when he endorsed Trump. Rubio isn't going to make the mistake of throwing his support behind someone he has characterized as a "con man". Plus, since he won't be a sitting Senator, Rubio can spend the next four years working on building up his support, avoiding hard votes and throwing whatever bombs he wants from the sidelines. He becomes an "outsider" again.

The only thing that the repubs can possibly hope for is that the Democrats end up as divided as they are. But whether its Clinton or Sanders, the defeated candidate is going to strongly endorse the winner and work for that candidate's nomination. Unlike the repubs, the candidates have not demonstrated a level of personal acrimony towards each other (even if, especially here on DU, the same can't be said for a number of supporters on both sides). If Sanders gets the nomination, he will gladly accept Clinton's help and vice versa. That may piss off some of their more ardent supporters, but both are political leaders and both should be able to use their leadership abilities to marshall support for the Democratic ticket. If they can't and we don't come together, shame on us.