Lawyers, senators, millennials. The field of Democrats vying for the Oval Office two years from now already includes nine contenders — and promises a record number of women and non-white candidates.
Their campaigns for the nomination will reveal whether centrists follow the lead of progressives such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to win over an increasingly left-leaning base of Democratic voters, or stick to the belief that the White House could only be won with moderate policies.
Whoever emerges on top will face Donald Trump, whose favourability rating is languishing around 40 per cent. History, however, shows that Americans more often than not give their presidents a second term. Election day is November 3, 2020.
Here the FT tracks the Democratic class of 2020:
Cory Booker, 49
Senator from New Jersey
"I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind… where we see the faces of our leaders on television and feel pride, not shame"
Long touted as a rising star of the Democratic party, Cory Booker first entered the Senate in 2013 following two terms as mayor of Newark, New Jersey. At 49, Mr Booker is the youngest senator in the race and "the only senator who goes home to a low-income, inner-city community", he says.
A graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School, Mr Booker is known in the Senate as a gifted orator and drew attention for his interrogation of Mr Trump's nominees, including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He casts himself as an innovative and bipartisan problem-solver, supports affordable healthcare, and is sharply critical of Mr Trump's policies on climate change and immigration. In his campaign video, he calls for a "revival of civic grace" in American society.
Most likely to: Draw comparisons with President Barack Obama's 2008 bid with his public speaking style and message of hope
Signature issues: Criminal justice reform, affordable healthcare, economic opportunity
Kamala Harris, 54
Senator from California and former attorney-general of California
"When I look at this moment in time, I know that the American people deserve to have somebody who is going to fight for them, who is going to see them, who will hear them, who will care about them, who will be concerned about their experience, and put them in front of self-interest."
Kamala Harris, a first-term senator, casts herself as "a law and order Democrat". From 2004 to 2010, she served as district attorney of the city and county of San Francisco. After that she was elected as the first African-American and first woman to serve as California's attorney-general, a position she held from 2011 to 2017.
She will face close scrutiny of her self-described record as a progressive prosecutor. Critics on the left have said that she has failed to embrace criminal justice reform, highlighting a challenge facing every Democratic presidential hopeful from the moderate wing of the party.
Ms Harris is well known in California but is lesser known nationally than other candidates, though her tough questioning of Mr Trump's cabinet nominees — including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in particular — thrust her into the Washington spotlight.
Most likely to: stress that she is tough on criminal offenders but open to criminal justice reform
Signature issues: criminal justice, civil rights, tax cuts for middle-class workers
Elizabeth Warren, 69
Senator from Massachusetts and former Harvard professor
"Politicians look the other way while big insurance companies deny patients life-saving coverage, while big banks rip off consumers and while big oil companies destroy this planet. Our government is supposed to work for all of us but instead it has become a tool for the wealthy and well connected."
Elizabeth Warren is the most well-known name in the Democratic field so far. She is often compared with Hillary Clinton, though their similarities appear to begin and end with their age, gender and law degrees.
Ms Warren is a proud progressive — she wants to tax extreme wealth and give workers seats on corporate board — and is likely to stand out for her work on financial regulation.
She presents herself as a champion of forgotten, middle-class Americans and has been heavily critical of globalisation and international economic institutions such as the IMF.
She is also known for her Twitter fights with Mr Trump, who has frequently referred to her as "Pocahontas", seizing on a controversy that she identified herself as Native American when she joined Harvard.
Most likely to: test whether her progressive message will be attractive to Democratic voters who have shifted to the left
Signature issues: income inequality, taxes, regulation of corporate America
Julián Castro, 44
Former housing secretary and former mayor of San Antonio
"Donald Trump has failed to uphold the values of our great nation…Yeah, we have to have border security. But there's a smart, and a humane way to do it. And there is no way in hell that caging children is keeping us safe."
Julián Castro, former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, casts himself as "the antidote to Trump". He says his immigrant background — his grandmother moved to the US from Mexico — is a testament to what immigrants have contributed. He has been a vocal opponent of Mr Trump's attempts to build a wall on the southern border.
When he delivered a speech for Barack Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Mr Castro was billed as a star of the future. A graduate of Stanford and Harvard law school, he briefly served as housing secretary in the Obama administration and was among a handful of contenders to be Hillary Clinton's running mate in 2016. If elected, he said that one of his first actions as president would be to bring the US back into the Paris climate accord.
Most likely to: draw on outrage over Trump's border wall and family separation policies
Signature issues: immigration, climate change, government-funded healthcare
John Delaney, 55
Former congressman from Maryland and former businessman
"Brexit chaos shows that the answer to globalisation isn't to turn inward or to play into the politics of fear – which happened with Trump and the Leave campaign – but to create new policies that make capitalism more just."
John Delaney, a former congressman, spent much of his career in finance as an entrepreneur and with a stint as chief executive of the NYSE. Perhaps the most notable thing about his candidacy is that he has been running for nearly two years: he announced his long-shot bid on July 28, 2017.
Mr Delaney was the first Democratic candidate to weigh in on Brexit, which, in an interview with the Guardian, he said offered warnings about responding to the challenges of globalisation. He has so far centered his campaigning on bipartisanship and finding a solution to congressional gridlock.
Most likely to: focus his campaign in communities that have not benefitted from globalisation
Signature issues: healthcare, criminal justice reform, responding to the challenges of globalisation and automation
Tulsi Gabbard, 37
Congresswoman from Hawaii and Army National Guard veteran
"When we stand together, united by our love for each other and for our country, there is no challenge we cannot overcome."
Since Tulsi Gabbard was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2012, she has earned a reputation for her opposition to American military intervention and "regime change" efforts abroad. She is an Army National Guard veteran who was twice deployed to the Middle East.
Ms Gabbard will likely face questions over her association with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. She met with him in 2017 on a "fact-finding" mission to the region without informing top Democrats. Ms Gabbard supports Mr Assad staying in power.
She will also face tough questions about her past comments on LGBTQ rights and her previous work for an anti-gay advocacy group in the early 2000s. She recently apologised in a video she posted to social media and said her views have "changed significantly" since then. As a member of congress she has voted in favour of LGBTQ rights.
Most likely to: draw intense scrutiny over her anti-gay advocacy and association with the Assad regime
Signature issues: affordable housing, campaign finance reform, criminal justice reform
Kirsten Gillibrand, 52
Senator from New York and former congresswoman
"I'm going to fight for other people's kids as hard as I am going to fight for my own."
A former corporate lawyer, Kirsten Gillibrand was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2006. As a candidate in a Republican-leaning House district in upstate New York, she once espoused conservative policies on immigration and firearms and boasted about keeping guns under her bed.
In recent years she has undergone a transformation into a leading progressive voice. After becoming a senator in 2009, when she filled Hillary Clinton's empty seat, Ms Gillibrand shifted sharply to the left, taking a tougher stance on gun laws and a more liberal approach to immigration, which she credited to expanding her perspective beyond upstate New York.
Ms Gillibrand is an advocate for women's issues. As a member of the Senate armed service committee, she has spent years grilling military leaders on sexual assault in the armed forces. She has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump and said he should step down because of the sexual assault allegations against him by more than a dozen women.
Most likely to: place equality at the centre of her policy agenda
Signature issues: healthcare access for all, universal paid family leave, and taking on "systems of power" including special interests in Washington
Pete Buttigieg, 37
Mayor of South Bend, Indiana
"I belong to a generation that is stepping forward right now. We're the generation that lived through school shootings, that served in the wars after 9/11, and we're the generation that stands to be the first to make less than our parents unless we do something different."
Pete Buttigieg, an Afghanistan military veteran, has cast himself as a voice for the young and a candidate of the future. At 29 the Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar was elected mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a town of 100,000, which observers say shows that he has voter appeal in a region that helped Donald Trump win the presidency.
But he's not well known outside of Indiana. He's entered a crowded field of more established candidates with higher profiles who will likely raise more funds. If Mr Buttigieg wins his long-shot bid, he would become the first nominee of a major political party who publicly identifies as gay.
Most likely to: appeal to young voters with his message of generational change
Signature Issues: economic opportunity, security, redevelopment and infrastructure
Andrew Yang, 44
Former tech executive
"As president, my first priority will be to implement Universal Basic Income for every American adult over the age of 18: $1,000 a month, no strings attached, paid for by a new tax on the companies benefiting most from automation."
Andrew Yang launched his long-shot bid for the nomination with a campaign book called "The War on Normal People", in which he calls for a universal basic income as an essential step towards a new, more durable economy.
Mr Yang warns that artificial intelligence and automation will place around one-third of American jobs under threat and believes that providing 18-64s with $1,000 per month — what he calls the "Freedom Dividend" — will establish a more sustainable model of "human capitalism". Critics say this would cost the US around half of the current federal budget.
The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Mr Yang describes his upbringing as "pretty nerdy." He is a graduate of Brown University and Columbia Law School, and is the founder of a nonprofit group, Venture for America, which connects recent graduates with start-up businesses.
Most likely to: push universal basic income by selling it as a pro-business policy
Signature issues: universal basic income, healthcare for all, human-centred capitalism