Forty-Five Versus Three Or Four

With the first 2020 contests now just four months out, Team WIN THE MORNING sees the Democratic presidential field narrowed to just three and generously, four.

The bottom is falling out of the Democratic presidential primary. And the top-tier — no longer five candidates, but three — is becoming more insurmountable.

For more than a year, Democrats had approached their nominating contest with a widely-shared belief that — like Republicans in the earliest stages of their primary four years ago — they, too, might take turns rising and falling in an expansive field. That expectation sustained the campaigns of more than two dozen contenders this year.

But in recent weeks, the leading band of candidates has contracted unexpectedly early. Heading into the fall, only three contenders are polling above single digits: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg remain at the periphery, while lower-polling candidates have largely failed to muster sustained, upward movement in fundraising or polling.

According to interviews with about two dozen Democratic operatives and consultants, there is little reason to expect any of them will.

“It was legitimate to say ‘Top 5’ for a long time, but with the exception of Kamala Harris being at the outer perimeter of the top three … you’d have to have a strange confluence of events for someone outside those four to win,” said Philippe Reines, a longtime Hillary Clinton confidant. “It would require all four failing. Like, you would need all four of them to be in a plane crash or something.”
For every other candidate, Reines said, “It’s too late in the game to keep saying it’s too early.”

What's different now compared to four years ago and the GOP clown car?

By this point in the Republican primary in 2016, Jeb Bush was already cratering. Scott Walker had risen and fallen. Donald Trump was in first, still to fend off a surge from Ben Carson before running away from the field.

The 2020 Democratic primary, by contrast, has been defined by its relative stability, with two full fundraising periods and two sets of debates now done.

Anna Greenberg, a pollster who advised former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s since-aborted presidential bid, said there was no boom-and-bust for Democrats because the primary “started so early, before voters really started paying attention,” and because of “the sheer volume of candidates.”

“It’s a little bit surprising because compared to ‘16 on the Republican side, where it seemed like a number of people had their moment in the sun … there hasn’t really been anybody who’s taken a meteoric rise,” said Scott Brennan, an Iowa Democratic National Committee member and former state party chairman.

Brennan said he's spoken with several campaigns recently whose advisers “feel like they’re poised and ready, they’re poised and they're waiting for their moment.”

But “for whatever reason," he said, "they haven’t had that.”

The old saw is Democrats fall in love at primary time, whereas Republicans fall in line.  But if anything the reverse seems to be true.  Republicans have been falling back in love with Trump from 80% support to 95% for two years now, despite the 2018 drubbing in the House, whereas Democrats are increasingly falling in line behind "electability" and that's Biden, Sanders, and Warren, with Harris as the dark horse.

Everyone else is fooling themselves.

The problem is that for once, Politico's analysis isn't screamingly incorrect.  This is a three or four person race now, but settling this out will take a while.

We'll see who catches fire, I'm still edging towards Harris and Warren myself.  But there's still a good ten people that could and should drop out of this race tomorrow.