WHILE ACRIMONY AND inertia reigned in Washington DC in recent weeks, to the severe detriment of hundreds of thousands of federal employees (and millions more who depend on a fully functioning United States government for their livelihoods) a host of aspirants entered the fray to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2020.

There will soon be more too – looking to raise big dollars and to bring on board the best political consultants and seasoned local operatives.

Indeed, the field could feature up to two dozen notable and accomplished men and women who are diverse in every fashion.

It is improbable that there will be that many candidates in the end, but at least that number of quite serious people are examining the feasibility of a run and considering whether a realistic path to the nomination exists.

It would approach a book-length tome to give each of their chances a fair airing.

So at this admittedly early stage – the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary are more than a year off – what follows is an attempt to devise groups of similar travellers and to make a salient observation or two about what may be ahead of them.

Household names

The first group might aptly be labelled the senior figures with household names. Former vice president Joe Biden is the 850 pound gorilla lurking around the ring at this incipient stage.

He remains very popular among all of his party’s core constituencies, has reams of experience and still appeals to voters in Middle America who have little time for most leading Democrats.

That said, his advanced age is an issue and he knows it. A reported informal outreach to former congressman Beto O’Rourke as a possible running mate suggests as much. Moreover, his role in the infamous 1991 hearings on Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court would be the subject of intense scrutiny.

Some of the die-hard followers of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders desperately want to see him run again. There is an undeniable base that would support him no matter what.

He is even older than Biden, though, and recent revelations of allegedly widespread sexual harassment in his 2016 insurgent campaign won’t go down well in the #MeToo era.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is the sole (all but) declared candidate in this first group. She has been a formidable advocate for struggling Americans both before and after her election to public office.

She is highly-regarded by progressives and has courted African and Latino Americans. But Warren is engulfed in a major controversy.

She has claimed to have Native American heritage and was listed by her employer, Harvard Law School, as a member of a minority.

Following DNA testing, experts interpreted the results as meaning that she had a Native American ancestor, 6-10 generations ago, while others argued there is no way to tell from DNA testing when the claim is so distant. 

If primary voters have electability in mind when they choose someone to oppose (presumably) President Donald Trump, will they back Warren, when many people think she relied on the dubious heritage claim to obtain her privileged position at Harvard?

This widely held supposition is somewhat unfair, yet so is politics, and it isn’t going away.

Senators, governors & congressmen

The second category is the hard-charging pack: senators, governors and congressmen among them.

Senator Kamala Harris made a big splash when she confirmed that she was jumping in. The daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India and a former head prosecutor, Harris is a favourite of many in the liberal wing of the party and of young women, in particular.

She is a Californian and, this time around, that state’s heft will be felt far more strongly because its primary has moved forward from June to March.

Against all of that, less enamoured Democrats will wonder if she can win over hearts and minds in the American heartland, where the Electoral College contest will as always be decided, especially given the sitting president’s demonstrated capacity for exploiting racial tensions.

The rationale behind the increasingly likely challenge of another senator, Sherrod Brown, can be found in one indispensable word: Ohio. President Trump won Ohio rather comfortably and most commentators now say that the state is just about red.

Nonetheless, the unabashed progressive Brown beat his conservative foe handily last November at the same time as a Republican unexpectedly cruised to victory over a Democrat to win the contenst to become the state’s governor. 

Brown asserts that his sceptical attitude to so-called free trade deals means that he is the only Democrat who can definitely win Ohio and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, any area he inhabits is a charisma-free zone and he has little national profile.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who has moved steadily leftward after initially casting herself as a moderate and evidently thrives on battling the president, has formally announced. It remains to be seen whether the party will select another New Yorker after Hilary Clinton’s loss.