EDITORIAL: Where the votes are in 2020

Amazing, isn’t it, that this presidential campaign, which kicked off in February 2017 with the first Trump rally, has yet to resolve into a clear picture?

With Iowa on the near horizon, the Democrats — and their issues — have not coalesced behind a single candidate or even a unified platform. The legacy party faithful, always cozy with Wall Street, fear a Bernie Sanders candidacy like the coronavirus; slightly less so for Elizabeth Warren. And who knows what sort of slime Joe Biden will be covered with when this impeachment business finally wraps?

Speaking of which…. It seems a foregone conclusion that Trump will survive the Senate portion of the impeachment process. But the buzz on Tuesday intimated that some Republican senators might need to at least feign interest in what John Bolton has to say — even the Fox News poll has a true 50 percent of likely voters leaning towards removal from office.

Even if Trump the president survives, Trump the candidate might be kicking off the election year in worse shape than he was when the “Access Hollywood” tape came out in October 2016.

Surely this impeachment, whatever the outcome, will have some detrimental effect on Trump’s campaign? Right? Right?

Hello?

Okay, fine: At this point, nothing will sway a likely Trump voter. Which means that the Democrats’ clearest path to victory lies in generational warfare.

For the first time in history, Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials will share a nearly equal portion of the potential electorate: 28 percent, 25 percent and 27 percent, respectively. Another 10 percent are Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2002, according to Pew Research’s numbers.

But this is the potential electorate, numbers that Republicans and legacy Democrats alike feel safe in ignoring, because they skew so heavily toward the youth vote, and the youth vote doesn’t matter. But tell that to JFK and Bill Clinton.

In this election, where seasoned voters have more or less settled into their camps, that youth vote — or lack of it — is the deciding factor.

The Republicans’ ability to attract young voters has never been great, thus the party hasn’t relied on it for 100 years. But to the Democrats’ dismay, the young people seem to like Bernie, who is not, technically speaking, a Democrat.

It probably doesn’t matter — young people hate politics just as much as they hate jackets, or so goes the conventional wisdom. But that elusive demographic may be the only variable standing between the American people and four more years of Trump, should the Democratic Party care to harness its power.