One Candidate Quits - Another Enters Race (& A New Poll)

What the Democratic Party needed is for many of the presidential candidates in the party's nomination race to withdraw -- so voters can get down to examining the candidates who have a chance of winning. That was not going to happen with 25 candidates, and 20 trying to debate each other. That's just a mess -- not a race for the nomination. The field needs to be narrowed to no more than 8 or 9 candidates.

It looked like that winnowing of candidates was beginning. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-California) announced a couple of days ago that he is ending his presidential quest. Instead, he will be running to be re-elected to his current seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. This was smart. He had been unable to get even 1% support in most polls, and was far behind in donations.

But as Swalwell was quitting the race, another person announced he was entering the race -- billionaire Tom Steyer. Tom has been running ads asking that Trump be impeached, and got some good will from Democrats for that. Now he has decided that he wants to be president, and pledges to spend $100 million to get the Democratic nomination (an amount larger than any other candidate has spent in a primary race).

I like Steyer, but I wish he had not entered the race. The last thing Democrats need to do is nominate a billionaire as their candidate to replace a billionaire (even one with some common sense). How can Democrats show they are on the side of working people, when they nominate a billionaire!

I think Steyer is dreaming if he thinks he has a real chance to be nominated. He has the money to spend, but Democrats want someone with experience who can beat Trump and hit the ground running when elected. Steyer has no government experience, and is a long way from convincing anyone he can beat Trump.

Here are the 25 candidates running for the Democratic nomination:

Elizabeth Warren
Joe Biden
Kamala Harris
Beto O'Rourke
Bernie Sanders
Pete Buttigieg
Cory Booker
Julian Castro
Amy Klobuchar
Jay Inslee
John Hickenlooper
Andrew Yang
Michael Bennet
John Delaney
Tim Ryan
Wayne Messam
Seth Moulton
Marianne Williamson
Kirsten Gillibrand
Steve Bullock
Tulsi Gabbard
Bill de Blasio
Joe Sestak
Tom Steyer
Mike Gravel

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The charts below show the results of the new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between July 7th and 9th of a national sample of 1,500 adults, with a 2.6 point margin of error. These charts shows only the opinion of the 596 respondents likely to vote in a Democratic primary.

The first chart shows the candidates that respondents are considering to vote for, and they could choose as many candidates as they wanted. The bottom chart shows the candidate they would vote for if they had to choose only one right now.