As US President Donald Trump prepares to celebrate a year in office, attention is already turning to who could challenge him in 2020, if he decides to go for a second term. An American President traditionally generally gets two years to work and the next two years are always focussed on his re-election. A President cannot hold office for more than two terms.

The year 2018 began with speculation about the presidential aspirants with a dozen names emerging already. Recently, the Washington Post ranked the 15 candidates it viewed most likely to win the Democratic presidential nomination. The list, led by Bernie Sanders, included six U.S. Senators – Vermont’s Sanders, ranked first, along with Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (3rd), Kirsten Gillibrand of New York (4th), Kamala Harris of California (5th), Cory Booker of New Jersey (6th), Chris Murphy of Connecticut (7th), and Sharrod Brown of Ohio (9th).

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The latest to join the list are media mogul Oprah Winfrey and the US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley (Republican) raising the question once again whether women can break the glass ceiling. Barack Obama became the first African-American president while Hillary Clinton’s bid to be the first woman president did not succeed in 2016. Will the fair sex get a chance to occupy the White House in 2020? The Politico magazine in an opinion piece recently noted, “Democrats, who have been unsparing to their own in this post-Weinstein moment, may be hungering for a Year of the Women 2.0 – one that tells male Democrats to take a backseat for once and catapults a woman into the Oval Office.”

Winfrey has been linked with a presidential run in the past too but she limited herself to campaigning and fund raising for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The speculation picked up after her scintillating speech at the Golden Globe award last week. Winfrey said: “I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when the new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure they become the leaders to take us to the time when nobody has to say’ Me too’ again.” The #Me too movement is a social media movement about the sexual misconduct backlash.

Winfrey is a household name in the US and elsewhere. She was born in a tiny southern town in Mississippi in 1954. Her parents were too broke to buy Oprah clothes and she wore potato sacks. She broke the glass ceiling in television and talk shows and has remained the Tsarina of the media. She now has her own network and has produced feature films. She is one of the richest women in the US with assets of about $3 billion and was ranked third in American’s self-made women list of 2017.

If she chooses to run, Oprah will enter the fray with a combination of strengths and weaknesses. Her plus points are many. The first is her ability to connect with the audience. Secondly, she may be able to mobilize women and African-American votes. Thirdly, she has a ready-made public relations machinery. The fourth is that fundraising will not be a problem for her. The minus of course is that she has no political or administrative experience. Converting her name and fame into votes also remains an open question. Most important is who would be her competitors among the Democrats or in the Republicans. What kind of new narrative could she come up with to woo the voters?

The US Ambassador to UN Nikki Haley’s name has also surfaced last week. Named Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, the daughter of an Indian immigrant family from Punjab, she was born in Bamberg in South Carolina. Her father Ajit Randhawa, was a biology professor at a local college. Her mother Raj started a gift shop Exotica, which has grown into a multi million-dollar business today. She married Michael Haley, a federal employee with the US Department of the Army and an officer of the South Carolina Army National Guard.

The 45-year-old Nikki has risen fast in the last decade. She has been the successful two-term governor of South Carolina. She has been the US ambassador to the UN for the past year and is an emerging star of the Trump administration. She has pushed through three new sets of sanctions against North Korea, bringing China and Russia on her side. If Trump does not seek a second term, she is betting on support from the Republican Party. The challengers from the Republicans include Ted Cruz and John Kasich.

It is really too early to assess the strengths and weaknesses of these candidates and as the year goes by many more might emerge while some might fade away. But the presidential hopefuls including senators, Congressmen, governors, mayors, are suddenly eyeing the White House with three more years to go before the 2020 polls.