After Trump, swarm of Democrats eye 2020 and think why not?

In 2016, when a slew of 17 Republicans sought the White House, the number seemed to push the boundaries of both plausibility and physical capacity. “People say, ‘If Donald Trump can get elected president, what am I, chopped liver?’ ” said Charlie Cook, who has tracked campaigns and elections for more than three decades for his nonpartisan political guide. People say, ‘If Donald Trump can get elected president, what am I, chopped liver?’ — Charlie Cook, nonpartisan campaign analyst In winning the White House, Trump took a sledgehammer to a number of perceived verities. After Trump, voters may crave the Washington know-how and political longevity of an old hand like, say, former Vice President Joe Biden, or the sleeves-rolled-up experience of Michael R. Bloomberg, a media mogul and former three-term New York mayor. But the success of Obama and Trump is, at the least, reassuring to any number of prospective candidates seeking to buck history — no mayor, for instance, has ever gone straight from City Hall to the White House — or make the leap from relative obscurity to the presidency, a feat that takes in a very long list of Democratic prospects, among them South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.