Mike Pence Leads Crazy-Early 2020 Poll
For the many, many Americans who desperately wish this endless and sometimes terrifying election cycle would just end already, here’s some upsetting news: Polling is already under way for 2020. The indefatigable folks at Politico, in conjunction with their Morning Consult polling partners, have a survey out today showing Mike Pence as the front-runner for the 2020 GOP nomination in the event that he and Donald Trump lose on November 8. This complements another Politico survey of its GOP “insiders” in battleground states indicating that many of them wish Pence were at the top of the ticket right now.
Let’s say Pence, who right now is riding a wave of acclaim for a debate performance that many Republicans and pundits found impressive, emerges from his ticket’s defeat with his own reputation enhanced and is deemed the 2020 front-runner by the cognoscenti and crazy-early polls. How likely is it that he can actually win the nomination?
By my quick count, there have been since World War II five defeated vice-presidential nominees who subsequently ran for president (without having been actual vice-presidents earlier, like Fritz Mondale and Dan Quayle): Henry Cabot Lodge, Ed Muskie, Bob Dole, Joe Lieberman, and John Edwards. Dole (Ford’s running mate in 1976) is the only one who won a presidential nomination, and that was 20 years later; in his first presidential run in 1980, he withdrew after drawing one percent in New Hampshire. Dole also lost a nomination contest in 1988. You cannot say his ’76 gig served as a springboard to much of anything. The most recent examples of former would-be veeps going for the brass ring are instructive, too: Lieberman very briefly led early 2004 polls, but when actual voting began he got drubbed. In 2008, John Edwards made a credible run after basically living in Iowa for four years, but departed from the race early, barely ahead of the scandal that destroyed his political career.
As a footnote, one recently failed veep nominee momentarily looked to be a political supernova but then faded into self-parody: Sarah Palin, who has never come closer than the rumor mill to an actual presidential run and couldn’t even wrangle a speaking gig at Donald Trump’s convention, despite endorsing him early.
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/mike-pence-leads-crazy-early-2020-poll.html
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