There is an enormous premium in 2020 to nominate someone younger to contrast with President Trump. The fascination with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mayor Pete Buttigieg reflects this hunger for the new and the young. The news media, in particular, is going to be heavily biased toward younger, new faces. If you are young, the news media will overlook stunning ignorance of facts. If you are older, your knowledge will not help you. This bodes very badly for Vice President Joe Biden and for Senator Sanders.

There will also be an enormous advantage for female candidates. If you watched the State of the Union, you saw the lengths to which the Democratic Party went to highlight the newly elected, younger, Democratic women. The news media wants this to be the year of the woman candidate and they will have a bias toward covering female candidates above all others.

The Democratic Party’s nominating process is heavily weighted toward minorities in general, and African-Americans in particular. The simple mathematics of the share of the Democratic primary vote that comes from the African-American community in many states indicates there will be a huge advantage for those who can appeal directly to African-Americans. It is the power of this community, combined with a rabid left-wing radicalism, that accounts for the elevation of both Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida as national figures in the Democratic Party—even though they both lost.