The chart above is from RealClearPolitics. It shows (in the yellow line) the average of the last six polls for the leading 13 Democratic contenders for the party's 2020 presidential nomination.
There are officially 24 candidates who have declared they are seeking the nomination. Do they all have a chance to succeed, and actually get the nomination? No! Right now, I count only 8 of the candidates that have a real chance -- Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar. I see the rest as dreamers and wannabes that are wasting their time and money.
I'm not saying the bottom 16 candidates should drop out yet. Let them have their moment. There's even an outside chance that one or two of them could break through in the June debate and join the aforementioned 8 leaders.
But by September, most of those candidates probably need to drop out so the Democratic voters can seriously consider someone with a chance to be nominated. I'm particularly talking about candidates who still couldn't get above 2% in most polls. And by the end of this year, any candidate not scoring at least 5% in most polls should stop campaigning and drop out of the race.
That may sound harsh, but this is an important election. Democrats must find the best candidate to take on and defeat Trump in 2020 -- and hopefully have enough coattails to flip the Senate and keep the House. This is not the time to sooth egos. Our country is in danger and we cannot afford another four years of Trump (and a Senate controlled by McConnell).
I'd bet that many of the candidates on the bottom are not running to win. They are running to bring more attention to their priorities. A couple of them have been explicit about that, but I suspect that even more are doing it than will admit it. Maybe we will end up hearing more about issues like climate change as a result of their efforts.
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right, but with so many candidates their message will not be heard much.
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