Later this month, 20 democratic candidates will take the stage in a two night debate that will showcase the contenders they think can beat Donald Trump. With most of the early attention falling to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, people like Mayor Pete and Kamala Harris are looking forward to getting some national attention.
Then there are some like Beto O’Rourke that need the debates to even keep going. Without some national attention, O’Rourke is speaking to tens of people at a time according to pictures and videos on his social media.
The first debate is coming up later this month, and it will be spread over two nights in primetime on MSNBC and NBC. All 20 candidates will have a little time to talk, and the rest is up to them.
These early debates may actually be more important to Democrats than the debates with Trump in the general election. Without any bright young star standing out, the party will be forced to support two elderly lifetime politicians.
Despite Biden’s big jump in the polls when he announced in April, according to CNN he has dropped from 32% in April to 32% now. He’s stayed out of the public as much as possible to avoid any embarrassing moments. As this election goes on, we all know there are going to be a few.
The debates are starting three months earlier than the GOP debates in 2015 with 18 candidates. That makes it hard to survive through the fall for the ones that are not able to gain early traction.
The biggest challenge is that Democrats understand that they need to be unified in order to beat Trump. It won’t take long for the 20 Democrats running for president to be whittled down to about eight or ten. The main reason is the funding. It is going to take a ton of cash in order to beat Trump.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton spent $768 million in a losing effort against Trump. He only Spent $398 million in comparison. In 2016, the Democrats had a few in the running and now there are 20. The donations are going to be spread out over a lot more candidates.
The more hopefuls that stay in the running down the stretch, will force these campaigns to blow through cash that the winning campaign could use against Trump.
The truth is, with the first debate just a couple of weeks away, the Democrats are going to start being nice and attacking Trump together, but in order to win over Democrats, they’re going to have to attack each other and this could get brutal.
In order to save some campaigns, a few of the candidates might lash out and target some of the hopefuls that are hovering around 1%-5% support. Expect O’Rourke to be an early target. Anything could happen, but some of the campaigns might not make it through the summer with or without the debates.
