Deval Patrick enters 2020 Democratic presidential sweepstakes at the eleventh hour

Less than a week after Michael Bloomberg revealed he plans to seek the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, anoth­er very late con­tender has stepped for­ward: Ex-Gov­er­nor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts.

In his announce­ment video Patrick (the first black gov­er­nor in Mass­a­chu­setts’ his­to­ry) said his can­di­da­cy would focus not only on the char­ac­ter of the indi­vid­ual can­di­dates, but on the “char­ac­ter of the coun­try,” argu­ing that the coun­try needs uni­ty and a new Amer­i­can dream for peo­ple to strive towards.

Patrick has a clear strat­e­gy for estab­lish­ing him­self in the race.

Of the four ear­ly pri­ma­ry states, he plans to invest in New Hamp­shire (which he reg­is­tered for on Fri­day at the last pos­si­ble moment), where his expe­ri­ence as the gov­er­nor of a neigh­bor­ing state could give him an edge over the com­pe­ti­tion, and South Car­oli­na, where his close per­son­al and polit­i­cal links to for­mer Pres­i­dent Oba­ma might help him to woo black vot­ers who cur­rent­ly favor Joe Biden.

How­ev­er, there are numer­ous and sig­nif­i­cant obsta­cles in Patrick’s path.

First­ly, time will be a huge fac­tor in his run; the for­mer gov­er­nor has already missed the fil­ing dead­line for the Alaba­ma and Arkansas pri­maries, which are both Super Tues­day states, and will strug­gle to con­nect with vot­ers who have been hear­ing from var­i­ous oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates for over a year at this point.

This orga­niz­ing effort will not be easy for Patrick to put togeth­er; with the con­test well under­way, there are few expe­ri­enced Demo­c­ra­t­ic oper­a­tives who are avail­able to take jobs with a brand new pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Many of Patrick’s per­son­al allies are already com­mit­ted to oth­er cam­paigns: Doug Rubin is work­ing for Tom Stey­er and John Walsh is work­ing on Sen­a­tor Ed Markey’s re-elec­tion bid.

This lack of staff is appar­ent from Patrick­’s announce­ment video. His sto­ry of grow­ing up in an urban com­mu­ni­ty and over­com­ing chal­lenges is sim­i­lar to that of Sen­a­tor Cory Booker’s, but in com­par­i­son to Booker’s slick and ener­getic announce­ment video, Patrick’s is rem­i­nis­cent of a Pow­er­Point presentation.

Even if Patrick is able to cob­ble togeth­er a com­pe­tent team, it is unclear how he would pay them. Unlike Michael Bloomberg, Patrick can’t tap a gigan­tic per­son­al for­tune to tur­bo-charge his cam­paign. Mean­while, many promi­nent, afflu­ent Demo­c­ra­t­ic donors who might have sup­port­ed him if he had com­mit­ted to a run ear­li­er are already com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing oth­er candidates.

Pro­gres­sive can­di­dates such as Bernie Sanders and Eliz­a­beth War­ren have pio­neered grass­roots fundrais­ing tech­niques that allow them to avoid rely­ing on big mon­ey. But that approach prob­a­bly won’t work for Patrick.

In part, that’s because Patrick has a long his­to­ry of work­ing with com­pa­nies and indus­tries that grass­roots Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists don’t like – an oil com­pa­ny that dumped chem­i­cals in the Ama­zon­ian rain­for­est, a firm ped­dling sub­prime mort­gages in the run up to the 2008 crash, Mitt Romney’s ven­ture cap­i­tal com­pa­ny, and Coca-Cola, who at the time were hir­ing fas­cist mer­ce­nar­ies to attack labor orga­niz­ers in their South Amer­i­can plants.

Per­haps the biggest ques­tion loom­ing over Patrick’s can­di­da­cy is sim­ply, “Why?”

Patrick doesn’t seem to be bring­ing any­thing new or inter­est­ing to the race; he’s a neolib­er­al (but so are Biden, Klobuchar, and Buttigieg), he is black (but so are Cory Book­er and Kamala Har­ris) and he’s push­ing a mes­sage of uni­ty (but then, so is prac­ti­cal­ly every can­di­date in their own way).

Fur­ther­more, despite the mis­giv­ings of wealthy Demo­c­ra­t­ic donors at Man­hat­tan cock­tail par­ties, ordi­nary Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers real­ly like the can­di­dates already avail­able (two thirds say the field is “excel­lent” or “good”).

Patrick’s ratio­nale for join­ing the race, as expressed on ‘CBS This Morn­ing’ last month, is that the Biden campaign’s sup­port was too “soft” and that the cam­paign was “con­tract­ing rather than expand­ing.” Patrick – as a neolib­er­al with a long career as a cor­po­rate lawyer – is no doubt wor­ried that a col­lapse by Biden would open the door to the nom­i­na­tion of Bernie Sanders or Eliz­a­beth Warren.

How­ev­er, his entry (along with Michael Bloomberg’s) into the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial sweep­stakes may actu­al­ly split the neolib­er­al vote fur­ther, mak­ing it more like­ly that War­ren or Sanders could clinch the nomination.