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CNN has her at the top of their Power Rankings for the Democrats in 2020. She gets more media attention than any of the other likely candidates — with the possible exception of Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti (though he’s getting the sort of coverage most candidates would rather avoid.)

But in her home state of Massachusetts, there’s a quiet conversation among Democrats: Is Sen. Elizabeth Warren ready for POTUS prime time?

“I love Liz Warren, love her to pieces—but I really hope she doesn’t run,” a Bay State Democratic consultant told InsideSources. Like nearly every Democrat we spoke to, this consultant was adamant about not going on the record.  And they all had a similar story to tell: Massachusetts Democrats are dubious about Liz Warren as a 2020 presidential campaign, and her performance the the past few weeks have only increased those doubts.

“A number of Democrats have told me they hope that she’s not running for president, just making some noise to distract Trump,” a longtime Massachusetts progressive activist tells InsideSources.

“What is Liz Warren talking about?”

That was the reaction among TV viewers when, during her first debate with her GOP opponent, Warren accused state senator Geoff Diehl of attending “a rally organized by the largest anti-Muslim hate group in America.”

Sen. Diehl, clearly confused, asked Warren to explain what she talking about. And that’s when it got interesting:

“It was a rally in Bern, orga-ed, uh, uh, uh, by, uh, Act for America, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated as a hate group, and described as the largest anti-Muslim group in America. It was on April 22nd of this year. You were there.”

Uh, uh, uh—what?  What “rally?” What “Muslims?” And where the heck is “Bern?”

When the debate ended, nobody knew what rally Sen. Warren was talking about. Rather than answer questions afterwards, Sen. Warren skipped the post-debate presser entirely.  So what was this “rally?”  Here’s a photo:

If that looks a lot more like a pro-cop gathering than an anti-Muslim one, you’re right.  Sen. Liz Warren was attacking her GOP opponent for attending a “Back the Blue” event supporting a local police officer killed in the line of duty.  “Support Our Police,” one sign read. “Blue Lives Matter,” said another, according to reporting by the Cape Cod Times.  “My sign says, ‘cops are heroes,’ and I truly believe that,” said local resident Marian de la Cour.

It literally had nothing to do with Muslims or Islam. Or “Bern.”

The rally was held in Bourne, Massachusetts, as in “Jason.” It’s the home of the “Bourne Bridge” and “Bourne Rotary” (both key features in Cape Cod holiday traffic) and one of the most well-known communities in the state. And nobody calls it “Bern.”

Except, apparently, to Sen. Liz Warren.

“She Thinks 1/1024 Percent Native American is a Win.”

It was a small gaffe, but coming on the heels of the DNA fiasco, it was a telling one.  What’s most disconcerting for Democratic operatives watching Warren is that she appears to believe that her release of her DNA data regarding her alleged Native American heritage was a win.

“She should have known she can’t beat Trump on that issue. He’s going to go after her no matter what,” a Massachusetts Democratic strategist told NHJournal. “All she did with the DNA test was raise questions, not answer them.”

Caitlin Flanagan, a feminist author at the Atlantic, shared a similar sentiment in an article entitled “Elizabeth Warren Has Lost Her Way.”

“Putting one’s genetic information into the public conversation about one’s fitness for office is a bizarre idea. Moreover, her insistence that it would offer definitive proof of something her supporters believe in was tone-deaf,” Flanagan wrote.

And, once again, the only person who doesn’t appear to grasp that fact is Liz Warren, who is still trumpeting her 0.09 Native American gene match as a political victory.  By doing so, she’s feeding fears that she’s not ready for POTUS prime time that previously existed.

In September Suffolk University released a Massachusetts poll that found (unsurprisingly) that Sen. Elizabeth Warren had a huge 30-point lead over her Republican opponent and an approval rating of 57 percent. But 58 percent of those same voters also said that they didn’t want Warren to run for president.  Only 32 percent want her in the race.

“These are people who like her, who will vote for her, and they’re split on whether they want her to run for the White House,” Suffolk University Director of Polling David Paleologos told InsideSources.  “It’s not that they didn’t like her, they just don’t want her to run.”

Paleologos believes that Sen. Warren is actually performing well in her debates, though he agrees that the Native American issue continues to hurt her. But he says a bigger challenge for her White House ambitions may be fellow Massachusetts pol, former governor Deval Patrick. “They both have the same audiences in the early states—except South Carolina. Warren is unlikely to play well there, while the large African-American vote would benefit Patrick.”  South Carolina Democratic strategist Dick Harpootlian agrees, telling CNN Warren “will likely not sell well” down South.

On paper, Warren remains formidable. She has a huge war chest, with $15 million cash on hand, more money than the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York. She’s placed operatives on the ground in key early states like Iowa and New Hampshire, and claims to have helped candidates in 150 races covering all 50 states.  And she’s got a clear brand as an economic populist ready to declare war on the “millionaires and billionaires” of America.  And it certainly doesn’t hurt her popularity in Democratic circles that she’s Donald Trump’s favorite Democratic foil.

The question is whether she’s prepared to handle those attacks? Is she up for the tough job of running for president against a candidate like Donald Trump?  Liz Warren certainly thinks she is.  Democrats, on the other hand, still have their doubts.

Politico is reporting that Deval Patrick is “inching closer toward deciding on a 2020 presidential run.”

Quoting the former Massachusetts governor’s longtime political advisor John Walsh, Politico is feeding a narrative they’ve nursed for a nearly a year now–that Barack Obama and his political team want Patrick to pick up the presidential mantle.

Today, Politico reports that Patrick “is really thinking about running but hasn’t decided yet,” according to Walsh.  Last August, Politico ran a story entitled: “Obama’s Inner Circle Is Urging Deval Patrick to Run.”

According to the August piece, “Barack Obama is nudging him to run” and Patrick is “ObamaWorld’s clear and away 2020 favorite.”  At the time, Patrick was more circumspect, saying  “it’s way, way too soon to be making plans for 2020.” Fascinatingly, he gave the interview from his post-governor gig at Bain Capital, the (evil) venture capital firm founded by another former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney.

Some big-dollar Democratic donors who play beltway politics are reportedly pushing Patrick, too.  And Patrick advisors like David Axelrod say Deval has early state advantages due to his experience campaigning in small-town central and western Massachusetts (helps in Iowa) and the eight years as governor of New Hampshire’s southern neighbor.

However, as NHJournal has reported, early polling has Patrick in single digits in the Granite State (despite eight years of coverage in the area’s biggest TV market), and when Sen. Liz Warren’s name is added, Patrick’s support drops to 4 percent.

Do polls six months before the midterms really matter? Of course not. But it does show that, for the moment, Washington, DC politicos and publications are more excited about the Patrick run that New Hampshire’s Democrats are.

Democratic State Sen. Lou D’Allesandro (author of the new book Lion Of The New Hampshire Senate) tells NHJournal: “I don’t think Patrick would capture the attention of NH Democrats.  He didn’t spend a lot of time here and I don’t believe he has been back since he left office.  As you know, the Bernie followers are very active.  It remains to be seen as to what the field will look like.”

UPDATE: Longtime Democratic activist and media personality Jim Braude tells NHJournal that Patrick would be a strong candidate in the Granite State. “Deval Patrick is maybe the best campaigner I’ve ever seen,” says Braude, who along with his broadcasting partner Margery Eagan hosted Gov. Patrick’s monthly “Ask The Governor” radio program during his eight years in office.

“Speechifying and one-on-one, he’s tailor made for Iowa and New Hampshire. Throw in the fact that he’s a liberal who business types can relate to and you’ve got a candidate,” Braude says.

Even before he took the stage at St. Anselm College for the “Politics and Eggs” breakfast event, former Attorney General Eric Holder was sparking controversy on the issue of President Trump and racism.  In a pre-speech interview for Fox News, Holder said that while he wouldn’t call the current president a racist, Trump is using “race as a wedge issue.”

“The president and other members of his administration have tried to use race as a wedge issue to divide the American people, and it is something that I think is reprehensible,” Holder said. “It is inconsistent with who we say we are as a people and it is not what we expect from somebody who is supposed to be the leader of the entire nation.”

During his speech, Holder was asked about the lack of trust between police and communities of color, and he addressed the race issue again–recounting the discomfort he felt when he was pulled over by a police officer in DC’s Georgetown community.

“I was a federal prosecutor. But to this guy, police officer, who was black, I was a potential something,” Holder said. “We need to look at the issue of unconscious bias.”  Holder also claimed that “we [the Obama administration] did a lot to increase trust between the police and these communities,” a claim many would dispute.  According to a Gallup poll, trust in the police fell to a 22-year low in 2015–six years into the Obama presidency–and fell to just 30 percent among black Americans.  In June of last year, trust in the police had returned to its 25-year average.

Holder’s speech focused largely on his work as chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, an effort to overturn what he describes as Republican gerrymandering. Holder insists that, as he told the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, he is not pushing “Democratic redistricting,” but instead wants a level playing field.

“I wouldn’t have signed up for this if it was an attempt to gerrymander for Democrats,” Holder told the talk host, and he reiterated that message at St. Anselm. “This is a partisan attempt at good government,” Holder said.

But it was in the area of race relations that Holder created the most heat, suggesting that President Trump was in part responsible for Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet about his former Obama administration colleague, Valerie Jarrett:

“This president has given license to people to say and do things that might not have occurred in the immediate past in our country. And, I think that we are going to be dealing with that long after the Trump presidency, trying to get a handle on those kinds of issues, the kind of things that Roseanne said.”

The Politics and Eggs breakfast is a must-stop event on the New Hampshire #FITN speaking circuit. Former Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley made an appearance earlier this year, as have potential candidates Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and conservative commentator Bill Kristol. Holder did little to discourage discussion of a possible 2020 presidential bid in his speech and has repeatedly hinted at a possible run.

The “Politics and Eggs” breakfast at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics is one of the compulsory events in Granite State politics for anyone considering a presidential run.  Conservative journalist and national leader of the #NeverTrump movement, Bill Kristol, will be making an appearance–and firing up the 2020 rumor mill–on Wednesday, May 23rd.

NHJournal’s Michael Graham caught up with Kristol at one of his Harvard Yard haunts on the eve of his speech for a quick Q&A:

MG: My first question for you is this: Is Bill Kristol coming to “Politics and Eggs” to formally announce his candidacy in the 2020 presidential race?

BK:  It’s tempting, it’s tempting. But then I’d be laughed out of New Hampshire and I’d be slipping back across the border to Massachusetts in about 12 minutes. So I think I won’t do that.

I’m just talking about my analysis of the political situation. It’s always great to be in New Hampshire because people here are so interested in national politics, and they follow it much more closely than almost any other state because they’re so conscious of their “First in the Nation” primary. And I do think the fact that independents can vote in either primary–and so many New Hampshire voters are independents–means they tend to follow both parties. In some states the Republicans follow Republican stories, and the Democrats have the Democratic stories. In New Hampshire, everyone follows everything.

MG: Which potential 2020 candidate best matches the mood of the Democratic electorate?

BK:  I think there are several moods going at once, which is why it’s complicated. There’s obviously a ‘We hate, loathe and despise Trump and we will reward the person who hates, loathes and despises him the most’ [mood].  There’s also a ‘Look, we’ve got a win’ [mood], with Democrats saying ‘We cannot afford to lose to this guy and, incidentally, we lost because we were out of touch with parts of middle America. Some of those concerns were legitimate, and some of those concerns are traditional Democratic concerns–stagnant wages and stuff like that–and so we need somebody who can speak to them.’

That leads you in two pretty different directions.

The conventional wisdom among Republicans in Washington is the Left has all the energy. Everything’s going Left. The empirical evidence so far in the primaries is a little mixed, I would say. Some moderates have won primaries. Some Lefties have won some primaries, and some have just been extremely close like the Nebraska [NE-2] primary. So I’m sort of open-minded about that debate on the Democratic side.

MG: What about Republicans?  Trump’s approval is back in the upper 80s, approaching 90 percent among Republicans. Of those Republicans who are dissatisfied–maybe they’re reluctant Trump supporters, whatever. Are they angry at Trump, or do the just want their party to go in a different direction?

BK:  I think Trump supporters–let’s just say it’s 80, 85 percent of the Republicans–are split into two categories: Half of them, some 40 percent of the Republican Party, are Trump loyalists. They believe in him. They are proud to have voted for Him. They hate his enemies and they like the fact that he’s shaking things up.  But about half of Trump supporters are reluctant Trump supporters. They voted for someone else in the primary–Bush or Cruz or Rubio.  They mostly voted for Trump in the general election because of Hillary and judges and so forth.

They support some of the things Trump has done, but they’re not Trump loyalists and I think they’re open to the following argument, one which you can’t really make now, you have to make it the day after the midterms:

It goes like this: ‘You voted for Trump. We’re not gonna criticize that. You support a lot of things he does. You think a lot of the criticisms of him are unfair. We’re not going to quarrel with that.  But–do you really want to do this for another four years?

It’s a little crazy. It’s a little chaotic. He comes with some downside risks. In foreign policy and and other things, maybe you could just like pocket the gains and get a more normal, so to speak,  Republican or Conservative.’

I think that message would have–could have– more appeal after Election Day this year. Right now it sounds like, ‘Well, you’re just anti-Trump. We’ve got to rally to Trump, we’ve got to defeat the Democrats.’  But I think November 7th [the day after the midterms], everything changes.  Because the question becomes not a retrospective question of were you right to vote for trump or his critics, or ‘what about Hillary?’ It becomes a prospective question. What do you want going forward?

MG: Last question: The Democratic ticket that you think Republicans should be the most afraid of in 2020?

BK: That’s a good question. These things are actually harder to predict.  I’m inclined to give the conventional answer, which I think is right, which is the more moderate the candidate Democrats nominate, the easier it is to win back some Republican voters and independents.  I guess I have the kind of conventional view that that’s the most dangerous thing for the Republicans.

But you know, sometimes history fools you.  Everyone thought Reagan would be easier to defeat than a more moderate Republican.  Take Elizabeth Warren. [Republicans think] That’d be great. We can demonize her. She’s scary. She’s left wing.

Well, I don’t know.  Maybe she could run a campaign that was pretty intelligent and get the best of both worlds: The Hillary Clinton appeal, first woman president; And some of the Sanders energy. Look, she’s a Harvard law professor. She’s not crazy.

It could be like Obama. [Independent voters saying] ‘She’s a little more liberal that I like, but she comes from modest origins.’ So I think [my fellow conservatives] may underrate Warren a little bit.

Here’s the scenario:

It’s November 2020.  President Donald Trump is locked in a political struggle with Democratic POTUS nominee Liz Warren. In a razor-thin race, both campaigns were thrown into chaos when a bipartisan ticket of John Kasich and Kanye West launches an independent bid.

Trump holds onto his 43 percent of the popular vote, finishing in first place. But he loses New Hampshire and its key four Electoral College votes—just enough to make Liz Warren president.

Except—they don’t. Because (in this scenario) in 2019, New Hampshire’s Democratic-controlled legislature joined about 20 other states in an agreement to give its Electoral College votes to whichever candidate won the national popular vote.  And so, with the votes—but not support–of the people of New Hampshire, Donald Trump is sworn in for a second term.

Hey—it could happen.  Even the Kanye part.

This weekend the Connecticut General Assembly voted to become the 11th state—plus DC—to join “The Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote.” Connecticut is committing to cast its electoral votes for the candidate who wins the most popular votes nationwide, regardless of which candidate wins their state.

The compact only kicks in when states that control at least 270 electoral votes—enough to pick the president—sign up.

And a group of New Hampshire Democrats wants the Granite State to get on board, too.

“We must ensure that each person’s vote is counted equally,” NH State Rep. Mindi Messmer told NHJournal. “[Presidential] elections should be based on the popular vote.”

Messmer, a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the NH First Congressional District race, supported a house bill last year to put the Granite State in the compact. The bill was defeated in a largely party-line vote, with Democrats like Messmer and Rep. Mark Mackenzie—another candidate in the race to replace retiring Rep. Carol Shea-Porter–voting to keep it alive.

(Rep. Mackenzie did not respond to requests for comment)

Shea-Porter raised the issue herself when she cast her Electoral College ballot for Hillary Clinton as an elector in 2016:

“Now think that [Hillary] did win the popular vote. And the popular vote (margin of victory) is the size of two of the state of New Hampshire. Two. We need to address this,” Shea-Porter said.

“This is a very short-sighted view for a small state like New Hampshire” says Josiah Peterson, debate coach at The King’s College in New York and author of The Electoral College: Critical To Our Republic.

“The only reason presidential candidates campaign in small states like New Hampshire is because of the Electoral College. In 2016, Donald Trump came to New Hampshire on the last day of the race, along with big states like Michigan and Florida. That won’t happen again if you end the Electoral College,” Peterson told NHJournal.

The National Popular Vote effort would seem to benefit big states, and yet four of the six relatively small New England states—Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and (America’s smallest state) Rhode Island—are already on board.

The other states are California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Washington state, plus DC.

What do these states have in common? None of them have backed a Republican president since 1988. This adds to the argument that partisan politics is the primary motive behind this effort, as does the fact that the National Popular Vote effort is bankrolled by “John Koza—a California Democrat who made his fortune by inventing the scratch-off lottery ticket,” according to Politico.com.

Does a small, purple state like New Hampshire want to be part of a partisan effort to reduce the influence of its own state’s voters in picking a president?  And what about the risk the compact effort poses to New Hampshire’s “First-in-the-Nation” primary?

“If the only thing that matters is appealing to the most people, no matter where they are, why would you have your first primary in New Hampshire?  Or Iowa?” Peterson asks.

“You’d want to have primaries in states with lots of large cities. You’d have a primary in Ohio, or you’d go to Florida, or California. You’d go where the population is.”

“Abandoning the Electoral College system would run roughshod over the interests and idiosyncrasies of smaller states like New Hampshire,” Peterson says. And possibly the #FITN primary, too.

So why do so many New Hampshire Democrats support it?

Martin O’Malley, former Maryland governor and 2016 Democratic presidential contender, brought a message of unabashed optimism to Tuesday’s “Politics and Eggs” event. Optimism–and liberalism.

“I bring good news,” O’Malley told the crowd at St. Anselm College. “It’s springtime. There’s goodness in this country, and it longs to be called forward.”

The “Politics and Eggs” event hosted by the New England Council and St. Anselm’s Institute of Politics is a mandatory stop on the presidential-contenders New Hampshire circuit.  O’Malley used this return visit to call upon Democrats to embrace the energy and idealism of young Americans. He specifically pointed to the leaders of the #MarchForOurLives rally for gun control, which he attended with his son.

“If you want to know where a country is headed, talk to its young people,” O’Malley said. “What I heard from that stage was the best of America.”

O’Malley made light of his previous less-than-successful bid for the White House, calling his return to the Granite State “a triumph of hope over cruel experience.”  He also took a pot shot at his previous POTUS rivals (“I was the only lifelong Democrat who ran for President in 2016”) and offered praise of a sort for the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

“Donald Trump is the most effective tool for candidate recruitment we Democrats have ever had.”

On policy, O’Malley toed the progressive line on issues from gun control to immigration to social spending—even calling for an expansion of Social Security at a time when many analysts are concerned about its long-term solvency.

But the specific issue most on the mind of the crowd and the candidate was guns. “America is the only developed nation on the planet to allow people to buy combat assault weapons,” O’Malley said repeatedly throughout his remarks.  When a questioner asked what he would do about school violence “without repealing the Second Amendment,” O’Malley laid out his extensive record on gun control while governor of Maryland: Requiring fingerprints and gun training for all purchases; imposing a mandatory 7-day wait period; banning the sale of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition; and banning the sale of what O’Malley insists on calling “combat assault weapons.”

The NRA calls these same guns “45 specific types of commonly owned semiautomatic firearms” and Maryland passed O’Malley’s gun law in 2013 over their strenuous objections.  Interestingly, the homicide rate in Maryland has actually increased since the 2013 gun ban went into effect. In fact, the city of Baltimore alone had almost as many murders in 2017 (343) as the entire state had the last year O’Malley was governor (363). Why would gun crime increase in the wake of a gun ban, and at a faster rate than the nation as a whole?

“It’s hard to measure prevention,” O’Malley said, before laying the blame for increased homicide rates at the feet of the two Baltimore mayors,  Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake and Catherine Pugh, who were elected after he left the mayor’s office to become governor.

O’Malley claimed there’s “a strong correlation between states that make it harder for pope to buy combat assault weapons and lower rates of both homicides and suicides,” an opinion some researchers do not share.

“In Baltimore there were a number of things we did during the 10-year period [when O’Malley was mayor] we led all cities in the rate of reduction of crime, and I was not able to make many of those things permanent. Upon my leaving, my two successors starting making different policy choices.”

O’Malley paused, then added: “There really wasn’t much journalistic scrutiny about those reversals of policy and as a result a lot of people are being killed again in our poorest neighborhoods.”

So does Martin O’Malley believe that gun control is a winning issue for Democrats in 2020?

“Yes I do. In 2020, and beyond.”

Bill Kristol may not be the only political pundit on the GOP’s possible 2020 POTUS list.  William Gheen, head of the influential immigration security group Americans For Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) has called on author and provocateur Ann Coulter to enter the race.  And he’s serious.

“I wish she would announce today,” Gheen told NHJournal.com on Wednesday.  “Her message should be ‘I’m running on Trump’s platform, except I’m serious about it.’”

ALIPAC isn’t a major player in the political money game—donating just $209,000 during the 2016 cycle—but it is influential among grassroots immigration activists.

The question is whether there’s a disaffected wing of the GOP primary electorate on Trump’s right to match the unhappy establishment GOP voters who would tend to support potential primary challengers like OH Gov. John Kasich or AZ Sen. Jeff Flake.

“When President Trump first ran, some of my members said ‘Why would you endorse him? He’s got no record on immigration. We don’t know if he’s conning us.’ And I said ‘Look, the guy’s running on our platform. If he diverges from that, I’ll be the first one to call him out.’ And I am,” Gheen said.

Gheen said if Ann did run, she’d likely focus on Iowa rather than the Granite State. “We’ve got a lot of strength out there on the immigration issue with leaders like Rep. Steve King,” Gheen said.

So how would mmigration activists in New Hampshire react to an Ann Coulter run? If Rep. Ann Copp (R-Merrimack), an activist on border security issues, is any indication, not well.

“Sink like a stone,” was Copp’s take on a Coulter candidacy in the Granite State. “We love Trump,” Copp said of New Hampshire conservatives. “I’m an ‘Always Trumper,’ not a ‘Never’ one.”

So far, no comment from Coulter herself—though she did take some shots at President Trump Wednesday night on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business Channel TV show. Coulter calls Trump a “shallow, coarse ignoramus” (she meant it as a compliment. Seriously.) who was willing to tell the truth because he didn’t care what the elites thought of him. “Now all he wants is for Goldman Sachs to like him. I don’t know what happened. But that’s a different president.:

“I haven’t changed,” Coulter said. “He has.”

But has he changed enough to turn Coulter into a candidate?  Is she willing to run? Well, she does have some experience in the Executive Branch.  Fictional, but still experience: Remember Vice President Coulter from Sharknado 3: Oh, Hell No?”

The flurry of activity in the Granite State this week has some calling it the start of the 2020 New Hampshire primary. Former Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley held some meet-and-greets and a town hall meeting on Sunday, and former Vice President Joe Biden is headlining the state Democratic Party’s fundraising dinner on April 30. Smack dab in the middle of the two Democrats is Republican Gov. John Kasich, who visited the state on Thursday to promote his new book.

It felt like a reunion of sorts for Kasich, his team, and over 200 supporters who came to hear him speak at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. In a small gathering before his speech, he thanked key allies for their help during the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Even though Kasich was in the state in August to campaign for Gov. Chris Sununu in his gubernatorial bid, it’s his first foray back to New Hampshire since Trump won the White House.

Of course, there was an elephant in the room (and not just because the room was chock full of Republicans): is Kasich going to run for president again in 2020? Those waiting with bated breath will have to wait a bit longer.

“People ask why I am back,” Kasich said. “I am back to sell books.”

His new book, “Two Paths: America Divided or United,” came out on Tuesday and one of his first stops in his book tour was New Hampshire, so it’s easy to see where the 2020 speculation comes from.

He mostly talked about his 2016 campaign and national politics, with some advice to his followers who are unhappy with President Donald Trump.

“In course of running for president, something happened to me that never happened before,” he said. “I was, like, so boring, you know, and boring didn’t cut it.”

Kasich finished second in last year’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, far behind Trump (35 percent to 16 percent). Yet, Kasich spent more time in the state than any other candidate, holding more than 100 town halls during the primary.

He took note of Trump not following through on some of his campaign promises, like ripping up the Iran nuclear deal and deporting “13 million Muslims out of the country.”

“You notice all that promise? It’s all been taken back,” he said.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College to promote his new book, “Two Paths: America United or Divided” on Thursday, April 27, 2017. (Photo Credit: John Kasich Facebook page)

He also encouraged unity, bemoaning the wide political divide in the United States.

“We all ought to spend about 10 minutes a day reading something we don’t agree with. All of us are absorbing only that that we agree with and getting rid of those things that we don’t agree with,” Kasich said. “Over time, I think things are going to settle down and people are going to realize that the difficulties that we face cannot be solved without unity. Difficulties cannot be solved unless we have deliberate and steady solutions to the problem.”

Out of the three “potential candidates” visiting New Hampshire this week, Kasich is probably getting asked the most if he is going to run again in 2020.

“He hasn’t been president for 100 days, yet,” Kasich told reporters. “I mean, everybody needs to take a deep breath. We’ll see how it runs out. He’s the president. Give him a chance. We’ll see how it goes.”

Why is he getting the question more? Well, it’s good political theatre. If there’s still #NeverTrump sentiment in a few years, Kasich is a good person they can rally behind, since he’s one of the few 2016 Republican presidential candidates who did not endorse Trump after he secured the party’s nomination.

That’s not to say O’Malley and Biden aren’t getting asked (both of whom have also skirted the question). The 2020 Democratic primary should be an exciting one, with 20 or so candidates expected to enter the race, but political pundits and the media love the idea of an incumbent president getting a primary challenger.

Challenges to White House incumbents aren’t as rare as people think. Five of the six presidents who served between 1968 and 1992 faced insurrections. When they do — like Ronald Reagan’s challenge of Gerald Ford in 1976, Ted Kennedy’s race against Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Pat Buchanan’s bid to unseat George H.W. Bush in 1992 — it’s usually because they were viewed as unsuccessful or unpopular, especially within their party’s base.

It’s very possible that Trump’s base could leave him in the next three years, but after his first 100 days in office, it appears they are still with him.

A University of Virginia Center for Politics poll of Trump voters released Thursday shows his approval rating at 93 percent with his base.

The most recent poll in New Hampshire shows that a majority of Republicans approve of the president, although not as high as the national average. About 80 percent of New Hampshire Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, according to a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll from February.

Those percentages would need to decrease for anyone to seriously consider mounting a GOP primary challenge. What does this mean for Kasich? It looks like he’s playing the “sitting-and-waiting game.” If the opportunity presents itself, don’t be surprised to see him be one of the first Republicans to declare their candidacy. For now, he told NH1 News that he will “see how things develop in the future.”

Kasich is still popular in the Granite State, and he said he had a feeling he would return often because he has many friends here, so he could become a regular face in these parts over the next three years.

Follow Kyle on Twitter.

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There are 19 groups in New Hampshire that have signed on to completely resist President Donald Trump, and they’re trying to take a page out of the Tea Party’s playbook.

A new national organization called “Indivisible” is going back to the basics: push back against Trump from the grassroots level. The group published a manifesto, essentially a manual on how to resist the Trump agenda, written by former Democratic congressional staffers.

“We examine lessons from the Tea Party’s rise and recommend two key strategic components: A local strategy targeting individual members of Congress; a defensive approach purely focused on stopping Trump from implementing an agenda built on racism, authoritarianism, and corruption,” they wrote.

Indivisible, which has more than 2,400 local groups registered with them, is advising voters to assemble at the local level and have members focus on their respective elected senators and representatives by speaking out at town hall meetings, asking their elected officials questions at local photo-ops and ceremonies, showing up at their district offices for meetings, and overwhelming their phone lines with coordinated calls.

“We can all learn from their [the Tea Party] success in influencing the national debate and the behavior of national policymakers,” the group wrote. “To their credit, they thought thoroughly about advocacy tactics.”

Many progressives are trying to recreate the circumstances that led to a wave of Republican victories in Congress and state legislatures in the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, gained more seats in the Senate, and flipped several state legislative seats, mostly campaigning on conservative ideals and anti-President Barack Obama rhetoric. But liberals could find it difficult to implement a similar strategy and might find more success if they work with Trump when possible.

The Democratic Party enters the Trump presidency completely shut out of power, with Republicans in control of the White House, House, Senate, and even most state governments. And they’re already divided amongst themselves with progressives versus moderates, and whether they should oppose Trump or work with him on common interests.

Just after his first week in office, it looks like many Democrats and progressive activists want to resist him at every step. The American Civil Liberties Union already filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order that temporarily bars entry to refugees from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen due to terrorism concerns. A federal judge granted an emergency stay Saturday to stop deportation of people with valid visas who landed in the United States.

But if they continue that mentality, they might run into some trouble in the 2018 midterm elections and even the 2020 presidential election. Even though the party in charge usually doesn’t do well in midterm elections, many House seats will still favor Republican control due to gerrymandering. And Democrats have to defend 10 Senate seats in Republican-controlled states. The political terrain isn’t favorable for them right now.

By refusing to compromise, Democrats may be unable to influence policy even when the president’s agenda aligns with traditional Democratic interests. It’s true that rejecting compromise can reveal internal differences and struggles within the president’s own party, such as with the ongoing Republican debate on repealing Obamacare. More damage could be done by working with Trump and exposing the internal divide in the Republican Party that’s been there since the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009.

An area some Democrats and Trump could work on together is infrastructure spending, albeit with some disagreements on how to fund it. Trump will almost need Senate Democrats to help get it through Congress. Some of his ideas resemble the “big-government conservatism” of George W. Bush that upset many Tea Partiers. Working out a few deals with Trump could anger some Republicans, and it might do more damage to the president than being vehemently opposed to everything he does.

If the Democrats could unify around that message, they could be in much better shape to retake Congress and the presidency, and ultimately be able to govern themselves and the country better than before.

Uncompromising Democratic opposition is essentially saying the party wants to be more like the Republican Party, by trying to emulate what the Republicans did in 2009. But while the Republicans were “unified” by being anti-Obama anything, they didn’t take the time to rebuild as a party and create a clear message for the base. That was evident by the loss of Mitt Romney in 2012. And now, look at them. They ended up nominating a candidate who barely aligns with their platform. They have full control over the federal government, but they still are struggling to be unified over how to run it, as exhibited by disagreement over many of Trump’s policies.

While it’s understandable that Democrats and progressive activists would want to go about rebuilding their party the same way the Republicans did in 2009, it’s better for their party to engage with Trump in policy debates because those issues are ones they can build a campaign on, and not just on partisan rhetoric.

The Democrats have a prime opportunity to genuinely build their party from the grassroots level up. If the loss of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election taught them anything, it’s that they need to listen to the working class in Middle America again and create a message that appeals not only to their base, but also to disenfranchised voters who feel left out of the system.

It’ll prove to be difficult for them to do that though, especially with some major players on the national stage that see the party going in a different, more radical direction.

Just look at the confirmation hearing battles. Several Democratic senators who are looking to run for president in 2020 won’t vote for anything put forward by Trump out of fear from attacks to their left. John Kelly was confirmed as secretary for homeland security by a vote of 88-11. Some of those “no” votes came from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). The more moderate Democrats might feel pressure to vote a certain way in order to follow suit, and especially when the media reports that former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Warren, and Booker voted one way, it could make it seem like the Democrats who don’t fall in line aren’t supportive of the party.

An unpopular Trump could win another four years if the next Democratic presidential leader is too far outside of the political spectrum.

And speaking of leaders, the race for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee is revealing to show how anti-Trump and against compromise the Democratic Party could be. While members of their party were participating in the Women’s March earlier this month, most of the 10 candidates for DNC chair were at a private fundraising conference held by liberal political operative David Brock. The message that could send to grassroots leaders is that the Democratic Party hasn’t learned its lesson from its recent defeat and instead, continues to listen to big money rather than voters.

The latest forums between the candidates have also shown that there aren’t many disagreements between them; they don’t have many new ideas to jumpstart the party, and they all have zero desire to work with Trump.

“That’s a question that’s absolutely ridiculous,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman Ray Buckley at one of the forums, when he was asked about working with Trump.

If the Democrats try to imitate the Tea Party movement, don’t create a unifying message for its voters, and resist Trump at every turn, then they’re in for a long eight years.

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