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Editor's Note: Dan Restrepo is a lawyer, Democratic strategist, and political contributor to CNN. He was presidential adviser and director for the Western Hemisphere of the National Security Council during the presidency of Barack Obama. On Twitter you find him as @dan_restrepo. The opinions expressed in this comment belong exclusively to the author. See more opinion pieces at CNNE.com/opinion
(CNN Spanish) - If something is clear in these days of so much uncertainty, it is that we live in times of black swans — unlikely events with immense consequences.
And it is clear that we are not talking about an isolated swan but about groups of them. Let's look, for example, at the American scene.
First, there is no doubt that it would be difficult to find a better example of a classic black swan than the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Before being elected, Trump was a second-rate "celebrity" with no record as a politician. He had married three times (twice with immigrants) and was presented as a champion of evangelicals and nativists, anti-immigrants. He was a billionaire with a populist spokesman speech for the ignored and invisible. And he was a person who had contemplated running as a Democratic and independent presidential candidate decades ago.
That a person with that profile, and even more with the personality of Trump, turned out not only to be a candidate of the Republican Party in 2016 but also president of the United States was almost impossible to anticipate.
And, like all black swans, that low probability event has had profound consequences — for the United States and for the entire world.
Consequences that are perhaps difficult to appreciate today, because we face another classic black swan worldwide — the coronavirus pandemic.
Covid-19 has altered the entire planet. Billions of people have lived or are being quarantined, and a gigantic segment of the world economy has been slowed down (to save lives) overnight, unprecedented in human history.
And now another black swan begins to arrive, or perhaps it is compared to these two epic examples. A black pigeon — a consolidated Democratic Party with a defined presidential candidate in the first days of April.
To see how unlikely this routine-sounding event is, we need to think about where we were in the American political world just three months ago.
In January of this year, Democrats had nearly a dozen credible presidential candidates. Clearly, we were facing a historically long and divisive contest. What could have been a deep confrontation between the progressive and moderate wings of the party was taking place.
In other words, everything looked positive for a reelection of President Trump, in front of a Democratic Party that will now delay its convention for a month –until August– in order to arrive at the definition of its candidate… and that, in that same convention, He was heading for a frontal collision between the two wings of the game.
When Lent began on February 26, 2020, it looked like Joe Biden's third presidential campaign would end like the first two: a total failure. In the first three races of the Democratic Party primary, Biden had finished fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire and a distant second in Nevada.
Undoubtedly giving even more encouragement to the president's hopes of continuing another four years in the White House. Even in national polls, Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-styled Democratic Socialist, came out as the preferred option among Democrats to confront Trump.
And then everything changed in the style of the black swans — all at once.
Biden won the South Carolina primary and with the momentum he got from that victory, after three days he managed to consolidate all that part of the party that was not Sanderista in Super Tuesday and on the two Tuesdays that followed before the coronavirus altered by I complete the country.
But still, Biden and the Democrats seemed on course for a divisive convention, before the black pigeon managed to crack the shell of its egg with the departure of Senator Sanders from the race.
Instead of "fighting to the last" as he did four years ago against Hillary Clinton, leaving wounds that cost Clinton throughout the fall of 2016, Sanders made a statesman decision and declared his campaign suspended.
There is no doubt that Biden has yet to work to consolidate Sanders' openness and has the difficult task of doing so at a time when the country does not want or tolerate politicking. But the route to a consolidated and strengthened Democratic Party is already in full view.
With the arrival of Easter, it seems that the Democrats have our black swan in the battle for the soul of our country. A battle that will culminate on November 3.
2020 Election United States Democrat Party
