Ed Rogers:

With no clear front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, several prospective candidates are beginning to stir. The process of touching donors and activists has begun, and a Democratic Party message that is beyond simply being anti-Trump is becoming increasingly clear.

The Post’s Paul Waldman recently confirmed the consensus that is forming among 2020 Democratic candidates in support of a single-payer health-care system. I have worried for some time that while Democrats were falling in line with a deceptively simple health-care message, Republicans were stumbling into maintaining a broken Obamacare that they don’t support but cannot generate the political will to replace. Not good.

Beyond the call for a single-payer health-care system, the Democratic candidates appear to be coalescing around a core set of issues that constitute a dangerous lurch to the left.

As I see it, the ante to be in the game as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination will include uniform positions on at least five issues. Specifically, any Democrat who wants to be taken seriously must support a single-payer health-care system, a $15 minimum wage, free college tuition, affirmative support for sanctuary cities along with minimal immigration controls and, finally, a contender must completely embrace Black Lives Matter and engage in a probing courtship with the radical pseudo-group the “antifa.”

The race to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020 will be a race to the left. The Bernie Sanders agenda has taken root. By the time the Democrats’ nominating process was complete in 2016, Hillary Clinton had become Bernie Sanders-lite. I see the next Democratic nominee as likely to be Sanders on steroids.

Economic polices will consist of government giveaways and anti-business crusades. Social causes will give no quarter to moderate positions, and LGBT special interests, labor unions, global warming fanatics and factions such as Black Lives Matter, along with other grievance industry groups, will face no moderating counterforce. (Disclosure: My firm represents interests in the fossil fuel industry.)

One interesting question is how the antifa will be written into the 2020 script. Maybe it will disintegrate and never achieve critical mass as a political force. The stoners that formed the core of the Occupy movement never had the energy to do anything, but maybe the antifa will do too much and never be viewed as more than an American version of Euro-anarchist soccer hooligans.

But just as the right tries to normalize President Trump, the left will try to normalize the antifa. As the rationalization gets underway, the presidential candidates wanting to distinguish themselves in a crowded field will be temped to show common cause and try to harness the antifa fury. The pandering to come will be nauseating, but nonetheless compelling to watch.

American presidents usually get reelected. And with the Democratic candidates embracing a radical agenda, it would be easy to believe that 2020 could be a modern replay of the 1972 Nixon vs. McGovern race. But I worry that Trump is so unpopular and shows so little capacity for broadening his appeal to the wider electorate that he could be an exception — a la Jimmy Carter in 1980. (I disclose, once again, that I never thought Trump would win in 2016. But here we are.)

Anyway, the Democrats’ lurch to the left is particularly frightening when you think how a candidate with the aforementioned agenda might actually win and set a divided America on a destructive collision course.

Democrats are now captive to the party’s left-wing fringe. Single payer is just the beginning.

Rogers’ fear about Trump assumes that Trump is the 2020 GOP nominee. Given Trump’s unpredictability that is not necessarily certain.

What Rogers predicts is not merely insanity on the Democrats’ part if accurate, it’s ignorance of their own history. In my lifetime Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were elected in large part because they didn’t tout usual stupid Democratic positions, especially Clinton. That was a lesson Clinton’s ostensible wife ignored, as did George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry. And you see where it got all of them. Voters vote for Democrats at the presidential level only when they don’t act like Democrats.

Voters also don’t appreciate being insulted, such as what New Hampshire Political Buzz reports:

Yesterday, Adam Sexton of WMUR interviewed the executive director of a new organization called ‘Look Ahead America.’ The organization is made up of some former Trump campaign “data masterminds” and will be looking to New Hampshire for voter outreach. Executive director, Matt Braynard, spoke with Sexton about the number of inactive voters in New Hampshire and the possible number of unregistered voters as well.

“We’ve identified maybe 15,000 inactive voters who we would consider disaffected, patriotic Americans. And potentially 100,000 or more unregistered adults we’re going to reach out to,” Braynard said. …

In response to this new organization reaching out to disaffected voters, Ray Buckley, chair of the New Hampshire Democrat Party, former DNC Vice Chair and former candidate for chair of the DNC, said the following:

“The organizing and activating of these extremists, these white supremacists, really could have a detrimental effect on the entire culture of New Hampshire,” New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said.

And then he doubled down on his statement on Twitter when he called all rural, disaffected voters in New Hampshire, “white supremacists” …

Apparently, anyone who supports Trump or who may actually agree with his policies and agenda, are white supremacists. Since Braynard is specifically talking about reaching out to rural, patriotic, disaffected voters, given Buckley’s statement, he believes these people are actually white supremacists and extremists.

What Buckley seems to forget is these are people who are members of his own party and Independents, not just Republicans. Or people who aren’t registered to vote at all. And to say anyone who agrees with Trump’s agenda, no matter what party affiliation, is a white supremacist is not only vile but shows how Democrats feel about those who disagree with their failed policies. Rather than have a discussion about those policies, Democrats would prefer to label these people with a disgusting moniker.

Clearly, Democrats still haven’t learned why they lost the last election. They spent eight years calling anyone who disagreed with Obama’s policies a “racist,” now their switching that up with “white supremacist,” further proving they literally have nothing to offer voters other than contempt, vitriol and hatred.