After watching last night, I still can’t tell the difference between Julio Castro and Beto O’Rourke, and I’m not fluent enough in Spanish to know what they (or Cory Booker) was saying.
O’Rourke made some grammatical errors.
From the WaPo:
In Hickenlooper’s case, the calls are coming from inside the house. 
Whenever the date is when the DNC announces who did and didn’t make the cutoff for this month’s debate, you’d hope that most of those who didn’t make the cut would have the sense to drop out, since they’ve already raised the bar for the September debate.
IOW, if you don’t make the cut for July, you’re almost surely not going to make the cut for September, and are unlikely to do any better later on. And if you haven’t been able to get anyone to pay attention to you via retail politics, and you’re not going to get on TV to get your message across that way, it’s over for you. To keep running, you’d have to really love being ignored by people in Iowa.
The obvious top five are Harris, Biden, Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg. Once you get past Mayor Pete, there aren’t that many with a realistic path. Julian Castro and Cory Booker are probably the candidates with the most potential to move up at some point later in the race. I think Yang, Gabbard, Klobuchar and Gillibrand will have poll numbers just above 1% and for just long enough to be seen and heard, but I don’t think they’re anywhere close to being legit contenders. I suspect most of the others I haven’t named will drop out by the end of the year, with probably half of those dropping out by fall.
And pointing out just for grins, my totally unscientific survey of online comments would have one conclude that the top candidates are Sanders, Gabbard, Yang, and Warren. Wonder why that is?
Not that he is a serious contender at this point, but I believe Beto’s poll numbers and fundraising are and will be stronger than the last four you listed.
Fucking awesome post, Kent!
Possibly, but people are completely ignoring his campaign. O’Rourke has a small following that most likely comes from Texas or is familiar with his campaign against Ted Cruz, or maybe they just think he looks kinda like RFK and his campaign will eventually catch fire. It won’t. Few candidates have run a more disappointing campaign so far than Beto.
In one of our rare moments of agreement, what asahi said about Beto.
I likewise agree. I have a few friends who are gaga for Beto but they’re Texas-based. All I hear from them is how he’s definitely the man to take on Trump and that the country isn’t ready for a gay mayor or an African-American woman and how it’s so unfair that everyone is ganging up on Beto.
O’Rourke barnstormed his campaign against Cruz but this one feels like he’s doing it under duress. I like the guy but I’m just not feeling it now, and apparently few outside Texas are either.
I’ve been running the Google Trends data on Beto and he consistently ranks near the bottom in Search – like for the past month or so. I sometimes had to run the searches in Trends again just to make sure I didn’t mistype. I didn’t. I acknowledge that this method of gauging interest probably requires a hell of a lot more rigor than what I’ve applied, but the way I figure it, it’s probably not a bad method to see which candidates are on people’s minds, for better or worse. From what I can tell, Beto’s campaign is as dead as a doornail.
But I wanted to add that I really like Beto - he seems like a swell guy. Just not really presidential candidate material. I could see him holding a lower level cabinet post though.
It could be as early as today, according to Twitter, Eric Swalwell has canceled a trip to New Hampshire and is holding a press conference today.
This onion article is relevant to people dropping out of the race
Bobby Jindal Not Sure He Willing To Put Family Through 2-Month Presidential Campaign
Jindal actually lasted 5 months in the race but quit in Nov 2015 before all the primaries
More on Swalwell.
Tom Steyer may be jumping in, but probably as an independent.
Candidate: “I’m running for President!”
Mal Reynolds: “Well, who in the damn galaxy ain’t?”
Had to Google it to see if Swalwell was in one of the debates two weeks ago (he was), or whether he was one of the candidates who was left out entirely.
My prediction is that if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Sanders wins the nomination, a billionaire will follow through on running for president. It’s their way of ensuring that a socialist doesn’t “corrupt” modern gangster capitalism. I don’t know whether Steyer is serious, but I suspect that there is at least one billionaire out there egotistical and self-centered enough to put Trump back in power for 4 more years if democratic socialism becomes a thing.
All too real a possibility, unfortunately.
IIRC Swalwell was the one who chose “Joe Biden’s old!” as the hill to die on at the debate. It did not go well for him.