Obstructionism The Number One Factor For Democrats Looking Toward 2020

The Democratic civil war is placing their 2020 hopefuls in an excruciating bind: either move to the middle or appease radical leftist grassroots members and donors. If you’re a candidate angling for the latter, you need a spotless record of obstruction on the Trump nominees to be taken seriously by the far left.

So far in 2017, no politician has taken that more to heart than New York’s once-moderate junior Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. According to new analysis from Roll Call, Senator Gillibrand is the only Senator to vote for less than 10% of the president’s nominees:

“Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York leads her colleagues in opposition to the president’s nominees, casting recorded votes for only five of 53 of them, according to a Roll Call analysis. Her votes stand in contrast to her home state’s senior senator and the chamber’s Democratic leader, Charles E. Schumer, who has supported 20 of the Trump picks who have received a roll call vote.”

Unsurprisingly, the Senators with the next lowest totals on Roll Call’s lists are Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders underscoring how important these obstructionist votes are to the extremes of the Democratic Party:

“Nathan L. Gonzales of Inside Elections suggested there is a common theme with this list since the top five Democratic resisters have been frequently mentioned as potential 2020 presidential candidates. ‘It’s not a secret that more than a handful of Democratic senators believe they can be a better president than President Trump. But they’ll have to navigate a competitive primary first, and being known as the chief opponent of Trump could be an asset,’ Gonzales told Roll Call.”

The Democratic Party’s leaderless, message-less march toward 2020 is being driven by the fact that the only thing the party can agree on is that it wants to block everyone Republicans nominate. In doing so, Democrats show that they still haven’t learned their lesson from the 2016 elections. Voters are tired of the gridlock in Washington, and sent an outsider to fix it. If Democrats can’t learn to put partisanship and their own ambitions aside, voters have demonstrated that they have no qualms with electing someone who will.