Interesting pair of articles on why the Democratic Presidential roster is so crowded. From Politico (May 9th, 2019):
Here are the qualifications for the first 2020 Democratic debates
The first televised debates for 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are less than two months away. Candidates will head to Miami on June 26 and 27, in what could be the first major winnowing events of the 2020 Democratic primary race.
Here's everything you need to know about how candidates qualify for the first debate.
How do candidates qualify for the debates?
There are two paths to qualifying for the debate stage: breaking 1 percent in three polls from pollsters approved by the Democratic National Committee, or tallying 65,000 unique campaign donors, with at least 200 donors in 20 different states.
And this second from the American Institute for Economic Research (today):
The Hidden Reason the Primary Debates Seem Extra Crazy This Year
This is a remarkable story of how the best-laid plans produced results that no one anticipated, with profound consequences for the Democratic Party.
For many viewers in television land, the spectacle has been bizarre. The 20 or so contenders for the Democratic nomination have not only become outlandishly left-wing (“Left vs. Crazy Left,” as Kimberley A. Strassel says). It’s worse: they’ve been performing in ever stranger ways: shorter soundbites, edgier clips, and punchier attacks, with be-bop-style delivery. It’s almost like they are trying to get a five-second Twitter video to go viral, something to rile up lefty activists so the stuff will spread as far and wide on social media as possible.
And from the first article - those "65,000 unique campaign donors"?
Instead of finding supporters in early primary states by going door-to-door, the candidates instead were forced to run a national campaign of small donors. But it takes a lot of money to buy the necessary social media ads to push people into donating $1 to qualify as a real donor.
This meant seeking huge donors to fund expensive ad buys. They pay on average $70 to get a $1 donation from as many people as possible. Who gives $1 to a candidate: you guessed it, the extremist activists who just happen also to be financially poor, also known as The Twitter Mob. In order to get them to throw a buck at you, you need to inspire silly activists, as many as possible. That in turn means that you have to reduce your campaign to silly slogans activists like in order to get their attention.
Emphasis mine. #1) - the rate of return is absurd and #2) - the amount of money being spent is insane. Who is funding this circus? There has got to be some campaign funding violations there - time to get digging... I do not see an exit strategy for these people - things are just ratcheted too tight. Going to explode in a glorious cloud of schadenfreude.
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