Stop Running for President!

Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NY)

There are too many Democrats running for president.  With the recent entries of Michael Bennet and Bill de Blasio we now have about 22 “serious” candidates for the White House, and with the DNC not being able to control this circus (they should have created harder goals to achieve for the debates), it’s unlikely we’ll see the race winnow that much before the fall.

There are a few problems with having so many candidates for president, but they can be boiled down to three major issues: wasted money, wasted press, and wasted candidacies. The money part may be the easiest to explain, and perhaps the one you’d be most likely to object toward.  If you look at the candidacies of people like, say, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, they’re raising in the ballpark of $3 million.  That’s not enough for a noteworthy presidential quarter (particularly against someone like Bernie Sanders), and it’s an indication that their campaigns are flailing.  But it’s also money that will be surely wasted on a campaign that is going nowhere. And these are sitting US Senators-imagine the cash that, say, Tulsi Gabbard or Tim Ryan, people who have no chance of winning are going to get and what good that could do in other races.  There are a finite number of resources that can be raised and spent, and that money almost surely would be better spent on a primary candidacy that could go somewhere, or perhaps more importantly, a lower-tier congressional race that could matter just as much as winning the White House.

The next asset that is being squandered here is press.  I’m going to admit something that could get me in trouble-most candidates, even “serous” candidates don’t have a shot for the White House and shouldn’t get press coverage.  It’s occasionally hard to tell which candidates are which here so I get why the media might struggle whom to cover, but, say, someone like John Delaney is clear a wasted interview at this point, as he’s been running long enough without a spark to indicate there’s no reason he needs to still be running.  In 2016, the Republicans had nearly twenty people running for POTUS, but only 5 of them had a legit shot of winning the nomination (I’d argue Trump, Bush, Cruz, Carson, and Rubio deserved the shot on that list), and perhaps focusing on just those men who had a legitimate shot might have made for a less chaotic (read: Trump couldn’t get away with the same bull shit) sort of media environment.  In 2020, there are arguably only six candidates (Biden, Warren, Sanders, Harris, O’Rourke, & Buttigieg) who have plausible shots at the White House right now, and while Klobuchar, Booker, or Castro could sneak in, most of the remaining candidates are just gadflies taking up room.  And with one exception this was obvious before the race began that these were the top candidates.  There is almost always 1-2 candidates like a Ben Carson or a Pete Buttigieg who can rise above and become a top tier even when they weren’t expected to do so, perhaps justifying some of this press coverage, and there are almost always top tier candidates (Chris Christie, Kirsten Gillibrand), who implode when they get to the limelight, but candidates who stay in the race when they clearly can’t win to build up their profile or just get some free press cost the legitimate candidates dearly.  Think of how different the 2016 race would have been for the GOP if it had just been Jeb, Cruz, Carson, Rubio & Trump when Iowa began; the Trump era likely only began because people like John Kasich & Carly Fiorina were too vain to admit that they had no business in the race

This brings us to perhaps the worst aspect of this race-the wasted opportunities.  Democrats are terrible in a way that Republicans are not at focusing on races that aren’t the White House, and only seem to care about midterms or special elections when the worst is upon us (ie a Donald Trump).  It is absurd to me, for example, that we have John Delaney running for president this year when we basically gave a walk to Larry Hogan last year during a huge Democratic wave election for the Maryland governorship.  Same goes for Julian Castro in Texas or Steve Bullock in Montana. These men are “serous” candidates…but for lower offices that are still vitally important.  Steve Bullock or Julian Castro or (if she runs) Stacey Abrams could be the key to Mitch McConnell getting to pick Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s next replacement or Chuck Schumer running that person's hearing. Democrats likely won’t have a shot at the Senate majority for another decade if they can’t pull off this year’s race, and with people like Bullock and Castro foregoing Senate races for sure-to-be-failed presidential bids, they are giving a potential Biden or Sanders administration no actual way to succeed on all of the promises that a Bullock or Castro are making on the presidential campaign trail.  It’s time for a lot of these presidential candidates to grow up, and admit not only that they should get out of the race, but they didn’t have the profile or talent to run for president in the first place.