If you add up the numbers, there are 18 Democrats now running for President. In fact, you can go and ask most of the legitimate Democratic voters, and at best....they can list out six of the names (most all will remember Bernie, Joe, and the Indian gal from Massachusetts). Yes, it's reached a stage where secondary figures are in the mix and generally unknown. Does it matter? No one really knew that Obama guy back in 2007....did they?
Maybe there are a couple of odd characters in this mix, and it really doesn't help or matter. For example....in 2016, your real choice as a Democrat was Hillary or Bernie (forget the other two guys). What if you'd deducted Hillary from this equation? What if this had been a 2016 race with Bernie, Senator Booker, Joe Biden, and the two other guys? Is it possible that Bernie would have been forgotten after the first four primary states, and Joe had duked it out with Booker for the most part? That's what I think.
I noticed this morning that Gillibrand's 'town-hall' meeting....via CNN....had dismal numbers. Of the eighteen in the running, I tend to think she's in the group of three that will do so badly in Iowa....that their participation will mostly end there.
So this group of 18 will whittle down pretty drastically by the 10th primary? I think at that point, it'll be five or six still left, and most of them will be on shaky ground. Maybe if Trump had serious contenders in the Republican primary, this would all mean something, but that doesn't appear to be the game being played.
