Democrats will face "real problems" before the 2020 presidential race rolls around, including who they will pick to run against President Donald Trump, former Gov. John Sununu, R-N.H., said Monday.
"The three major candidates, [Joe] Biden, [Elizabeth] Warren, and [Bernie] Sanders will all be in their mid-70s by 2020, and the socialist wing of the Democratic Party is catching all the headlines," Sununu, who served as former President George H.W. Bush's chief of staff, told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
"They are going to have problems not only in 2020 to try to create candidates with an attractive identity, but they may have serious problems in 2018," he added.
The Democratic Party also has not solved its problems concerning superdelegates, Sununu said.
"They've tweaked it, but they're liable to screw up the process again," he commented.
The Democratic National Committee earlier this year voted to limit the power of superdelegates or the party's system of unpledged delegates.
The DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to prevent superdelegates from voting on the first ballot during the party's presidential nominating convention, "unless a candidate has already earned enough pledged delegate votes from state primaries and caucuses to win the nomination."
Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates will feel they must announce earlier because the fundraising process is so demanding.
"The fundraising process now is so complicated and so demanding," Sununu said. "They have to go to Los Angeles and New York and Washington and Chicago and all these liberal Democrats to raise money."
Meanwhile, the first primaries and caucuses are in Iowa and New Hampshire, and "there's a less-socialist set of voters in those two states, so they've got to do something early about raising money and then reshape their image to suit the early primaries," he added.
Sununu said he thinks the top three Democratic contenders all have "burdens" that will keep them from winning the White House, so he could not name the best candidate for the party.
"Biden, Warren, Sanders, all of them seem to have the age burden," he said.
"They're out of touch with the base of the party, which is drifting left, and frankly, [they have] the incapacity to find a coherent message. Right now those seem to be the three most significant ones in the polls."
President Trump has said he would like to face off against Biden, because he thinks he can defeat him, and Sununu said the president has a point.
"Joe Biden is a nice guy," Sununu said. "Everybody likes him personally, but they all cringe when he starts his conversations publicly and the gaffes he generates. Biden is a nice man, but not a good candidate."
Biden also carries the "burden" of having been President Barack Obama's vice president, Sununu said.
"Whether Democrats will admit it or not, a lot of the more moderate Democrats across the country are beginning to understand the disaster the last eight years were, and I think Biden would carry that burden going into the primary process on the Democratic side," he said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.