Who Will Run for President in 2020?

Is late April of 2018 too early to start speculating about the upcoming presidential election in 2020?  Well, the successful candidates for their party's nomination to the high office have in recent years announced their candidacies during the first half of the preceding year...this means that early next year will be the focus for this.  Naturally, when one of the parties has an incumbent president who can seek reelection, its number of candidates tends to be low.  We don't know at this time whether Donald Trump will seek reelection, but for the sake of this article let's assume that he does.  Then you would probably see some disaffected Republicans challenge him early on...I'm thinking of senators Jeff Flake of Arizona or Bob Corker of Tennessee, both of whom have traded public criticisms with the president and are not running for reelection to their Senate seats.  And should Trump not run...well, expect another 15+ number of aspirants to enter the fray.  The Democratic side is more interesting...

Here are a few names being mentioned as possible candidates: former vice-president Joe Biden, Oprah Winfrey, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, Tim Kaine, and Kirsten Gillibrand...the last seven are all sitting U.S. senators.  I'm fine with all but the last one...I resent how Gillibrand would repeatedly call on others to resign immediately after any sexual harassment allegation was made against them, especially in the case of Al Franken, her Senate colleague.  Will Hillary Clinton try to make another run?  Who knows, but I hope she doesn't.  Of the list, I would like to see Biden get the nomination...but he keeps talking about how important his family is to him.  Excuse me, but don't all these other potential candidates have families, too? And by the way, having a family didn't get in the way of him serving thirty-six years in the Senate and eight more as vice-president.  If Biden doesn't run, then my second choice would be Amy Klobuchar, one of my favorite senators who can speak straight to the relevant points of an argument without insulting the other side...something increasingly rare these days...

There are others who have talked about running, notably Dallas Mavericks basketball owner Mark Cuban on the Republican side and recording star Kanye West (who knows which side).  Should I take these two seriously? Well, in the era of Trump, you can't write anybody off anymore, the bar has been lowered so much.  And I'm sure that there will be some new figures throwing their hats into the ring and making it all the more interesting.  As long as the Democratic Party comes together at the end behind their nominee and the "voters" actually bother to get off their butts this time around and go vote (and not waste it on a fringe party candidate), I'm fine with a multitude of candidates from their ranks.  But that Republican field in 2015-16 was a bit ridiculous (in number, at least), wasn't it?