Democrats' 2020 pick may come down to candidates' border wall bonafides, strategists say

Less than a year ago, all but three Senate Democrats were willing to give President Trump $25 billion for his border wall. But what looked like an inconsequential "no" vote at the time could drive a winning campaign in 2020, Bloomberg reports.

It seems almost unthinkable that in February 2018, 44 out of 47 Senate Democrats said they'd give Trump wall funding in exchange for citizenship for the undocumented Dreamers. The government is currently shut down over one-fifth of the money Democrats were once willing to relinquish, and party leaders are now uniformly opposed to funding more than $2.7 billion of it.

But Democrat weren't so united a year ago. Potential 2020 candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) co-sponsored the 2018 border compromise, and nearly every other senator rumored to be or officially running in 2020 backed it. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif), though, voted against the failed 2018 bill, saying she wouldn't use "taxpayer money ...to implement this administration's anti-immigrant agenda." Immigration activist Frank Sharry thinks Harris was thinking about 2020 when she made the choice. It would make for a perfect "30-second ad coming in the primary" to say all these other Democrats "voted for" a wall, Sharry told Bloomberg.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

Even Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) former campaign press secretary, Symone Sanders, conceded to Harris' "winning message," telling Bloomberg she "was on the right side of history when it came to that vote." After all, in this ongoing shutdown squabble, Democrats don't want to be seen "giv[ing Trump] the money to make him stop hurting people," as MSNBC's Joy-Ann Reid puts it.

Harris isn't officially running yet, but has reportedly decided to announce her decision soon — perhaps around Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Read more about Harris' advantage at Bloomberg.