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It really is quite something and I'm having trouble scrounging up anything remotely comparable to the media, "Democratic Twitter", Democratic Party forum posters, etc.'s increasingly hostile demands of candidates who don't even poll at 1% consistently and will be winnowed out of the debates after next week to DROP OUT ALREADY along with increasingly hilarious displays like CBS's phony delegate counting propaganda six months before any delegates are actually allocated when the Iowa Caucuses occur and seventh months before Super Tuesday will officially make it statistically impossible for all but a few campaigns to win the nomination.
This all from a party (and its associated groups/media/etc.) that's trying to show everyone how small-d democratic they are and open to everyone after their complete and utter failure to anoint a candidate who polled at nearly 50% and had 30-40 point leads at this point four years ago, and only didn't stay at the 60-65% in the polls she had spent the prior 6 months at, because the second-place candidate (and current 2020 front-runner) had not been shoved out of the way yet forcing a hard choice on the anti-Clinton coalition to resolve itself to a woman and minority hating creepy WEIRDO who had birds land on his podium.
And they're doing this, not to the "randoms" who are increasingly polling well and gaining donations enough to stay in the debates of their own accord, but focusing it yet again on sitting or recent Senators, Governors, and Representatives who were never granted the media fanfare and anointment as a "serious candidate" as occurred to a 37 year old Mayor of South Bend, Indiana; a former Representative of irrelevance who is best known for being a failed Senate candidate with a fetish for standing on objects; and even an unannounced former state representative who lost their bid for Governor yet continues to claim they actually won thereby harming democracy itself in the worst way possible.
Yet while vomiting out this irrelevant concern trolling I realize that I do have a historical comparison point and it's ironically from the last time the same party attempted to show its improved democratic bonafides after nominating a Presidential candidate who didn't run in a single primary leading to police having to beat anti-war protesters into submission. The result was three election cycles in which the party stars refused to read the rules and allowed a non-mainstream Senator from South Dakota to lead them to a landslide defeat, an unknown former Georgia governor to seize the nomination (and hold it four years later) simply by actually running in every caucus and primary creating an impenetrable wall of delegates. A situation that by the fourth election cycle allowed an unknown Senator from Colorado and the head of the Rainbow Coalition to nearly deny a former VP his preplanned nomination leading to the creation of something called a superdelegate that henceforth (until this cycle) would hold the balance of power preventing any future contested conventions. (The fact that the party powers had not ever learned their lesson would reappear in 2008 when a first term Senator from Illinois actually contested every caucus directly and intensely, while the presumptive nominee chose to essentially ignore them and suddenly found herself trailing in delegates and even worse losing her superdelegate cushion as they went neutral or worse, switched to the first termer who wasn't learning his place.)
Drop out already, you're wasting everyones time by... making us cover you? Except, they don't really. Major area coverage of these candidates is almost entirely limited to covering them as a group, like quirky things like how they're pinching pennies, and talking to small groups at YUM! Brands Pizza Hut. Media coverage of the campaign is almost entirely dominated by a focus on the four frontrunners: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and thanks to events over the course of two weeks through the first and to date only debate, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. With coverage of the fifth place candidate, Robert Francis O'Rourke, almost absurdly dominated by his weekly relaunches focused on propelling him back to his "natural position" in the top four. There's pretty much far more coverage of demands for John Delaney (who polls evenly with Julian Castro and Kirsten Gillibrand) to drop out as there is any coverage explaining how Steve Bullock has pulled his campaign into the Amy Klobuchar tier despite not appearing in the first debate even though he qualified. (The party chose Swalwell, as there were no rules for tiebreakers, who then actually did drop out.) de Blasio coverage is weeks behind, covering him as lost and fruitless and not the fact that he's restored himself to the 1% tier as well, something he hasn't existed in
since he actually entered the race, simply because of how finance reporting is structured with it being released in ways that are a month to months out of date. Once Representative and two time Senate candidate, Joe Sestak received almost no media coverage for entering the race, while Tom Steyer has been offered a structure of frontrunner status despite the fact that he
may not appear in any debate and has never been nominated to anything, purely due to his status as throwing away millions of dollars of his own money on one failed campaign he's trying to roll into a second.
Ugh, just drop out already. We don't want to have to cover you. Which we aren't because you're irrelevant and we demand you prove it by dropping out. But still. It's the principle of the thing. When we offer those 2:30pm slots for five minutes with our anchors that nobody can name we want it to be some Kamala Harris toady rushing to be first not...you, the actual candidate, Jay Gabbard-Bennet or whatever your name is you unserious candidate. DROP OUT! THIS IS TOO IMPORTANT! Don't you realize that you have no chance and never will? What's that? A Beto supporter who doesn't work for the campaign is willing to appear? Give em the whole A block! This could be a complete game changer reinvention that sticks!
