It may seem as though the 2020 U.S. presidential election is a long way off. But good luck telling that to President Donald Trump or a dozen or so Democrats contemplating a White House bid two years from now.
Trump has already been out on the campaign trail testing themes for his expected re-election bid. "Our new slogan for 2020. Do you know what it is? Keep America great!" Trump told cheering supporters at a recent rally in Elkhart, Indiana.
But Trump also made it clear he is concerned about this year's congressional midterm elections, in which opposition Democrats are favored to make gains.
"And all of the great momentum that we are having as a country on jobs, on safety, on security, on our military — it is all at stake in November," Trump warned at the Indiana rally.
Large Democratic field
2020 is expected to produce a bumper crop of Democratic presidential contenders who will vie for their party's nomination. Those in the group range from the well-known like former Vice President Joe Biden and 2016 contender Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont to a younger, less recognizable contingent that includes California Senator Kamala Harris and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
WATCH: Democrats Begin Their Search for the Anti-Trump
Several potential Democratic presidential contenders spoke about the party's future at a recent conference in Washington hosted by the Center for American Progress, a Democratic-leaning public policy institute in Washington.
Among the speakers was Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who said Democrats face an uphill battle to win back control of Congress this year because of long-standing Republican advantages in winning a majority in the House of Representatives.
"We can't climb that hill by ignoring the millions of Americans who are angry and scared about the damage this president and this Republican Party have done to our democracy," Warren told the conference to a round of applause. "We can't ignore it and we shouldn't want to ignore it."
Targeting Trump
Sanders, who lost out to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, also vowed to make Trump the focal point of Democratic efforts to win back control of Congress.
"We must not allow Donald Trump or anyone else to divide us up," Sanders told the conference. He added that when Democrats unite around a "progressive agenda, there is nothing, nothing, nothing that we cannot accomplish."
Gillibrand predicted Democrats would benefit this year from energized female voters.
"The reason we will take back the House and hopefully the Senate is because we have great women candidates all across this country running in record numbers, and there is a powerful wave of women activists who are going to get it done," she said.
Democratic agenda
Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who is also weighing a bid in 2020, sought to strike a more unifying tone as he spoke about the challenge of Democrats reaching out to Trump supporters.
"It's about being the truth of who we are, about bringing our country together again. It's about sharing those common values. It's about recognizing that common pain must produce a sense of common purpose again," he said.
But another Democrat who could figure in the 2020 race, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, said voters are looking for more than politicians simply slamming Trump.
"They don't like how he beats up on innocent people, and they are going to stand up against that," Klobuchar told the conference. "But we are not going to see it if we spend our whole time bemoaning the fact that he is there. He's there, and we have to present an alternative."
Like most presidents before him, analysts said, Trump should be prepared for losses by his party in the November midterms.
"He has his base with him, but the other side is really motivated to come out," said John Fortier of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. "And all of these special elections that we have seen, we have seen that Democrats are really motivated to vote against him. I think his base will be with him, but the enthusiasm is really on the other side."
Party divisions
But Democrats have their challenges as well, which surfaced at times during the Center for American Progress forum. Some Democratic speakers argued that resisting Trump should be a key part of this year's midterm election strategy, while others said Democrats needed to provide a clear, alternative agenda to voters in the upcoming campaign.
There is also the lingering question of how to unite the Sanders and Clinton factions from the 2016 primary race and the divisions that remain to this day.
"The Democratic Party has not had much to offer in the last two years, and the established Democratic Party is still consumed with preventing its own left wing from dominating the party," said professor David Abraham of the University of Miami Law School.
It may seem early, but Trump and a slew of Democrats who would like to succeed him are already looking past this year's midterm elections to what the political landscape may look like in 2020, and to what extent Americans may be looking to either keep the status quo or make a change in leadership.
