John Kasich and John Hickenlooper have both been flirting with a 2020 presidential run. Politics is chaos, and an article speculating on the election of 2020 could become out of date the hour that it is published. That being said, this article is discussing the 2020 election hyperbolically assuming that Donald Trump will be allowed to run. This article also further assumes that Donald Trump will be the 2020 Republican candidate.
Kasich has the more likely route to the president
Governors John Kasich and John Hickenlooper have, in the past, even discussed running on a bipartisan ticket together, however, it is unknown if this will come to pass. At the moment it appears Hickenlooper will primary in what may be a packed Democratic field. While Republican John Kasich may primary against President Trump, he will most likely run as an independent in the general election.
Out of these two men, Kasich has the more likely route to the president, but would most likely serve as a foil to the president and possibly even the Democratic candidate.
Kasich has been attempting to sell the most centrist person in American political history. Whether this sale is working is unknown. However, this strategy could pull in people who find the current state of Democratic and Republican parties too extreme.
Meanwhile, Hickenlooper's best strategy to the White House would be to perform well in the Democratic debates and then run on an independent ticket with Kasich. Hickenlooper has as much of a shot of winning the Democratic field as Kasich does beating Trump in a primary - next to none. The Republican party has become the party of Trump and the Democratic Party is the party of Bernie Sander.
Vanilla centrists like Kasich and Hickenlooper do not stand a chance when trying to appeal to the party's most passionate members.
However, they could pull some swing support, not enough to win but enough to disrupt the chances for some other candidate. It is unknown if a Kasich/Hickenlooper ticket would appeal more to "moderate Democrats" or "moderate Republicans." Yet, no matter, this potential bipartisan ticket could accrue enough votes so these candidates could foil a joint rival, President Trump.
Why run in the election?
Both Kasich and Hickenlooper have made it clear that they are not fans of the President or his policies. Hickenlooper told CNN, "We’re seeing all kinds of evidence that the Trump presidency isn’t succeeding. It’s not taking America where it needs to go. It certainly isn’t fulfilling his promises to the rural parts of America.”
There is a logic as to why a third party ticket could win as Kasich stated, "But a third-party candidate is possible because if you have the Republicans on the extreme and the Democrats on the extreme, there’s a big, wide open space in the middle.”
The problem is, Republicans and Democrats are locked into these "extremes" and they do not believe the centrist middle of the road policies will help them.
For the most part, voters are dissatisfied with the system and will not support anything that upholds the system in its current form. And I think Kasich and Hickenlooper know this and know they cannot win. They simply want to be a foil to Trump. The duo would rather see Bernie Sanders in office over President Trump. Yet, the duo has made a major mistake in assuming that Republicans would flip to them rather than Democrats.
Now again, this is all what if's and speculation and this ticket may never even occur. Yet, if all this speculation becomes a fact, it has potentially huge implications on the presidential election of 2020.