The Democratic Race Is Still Wide Open

Jonathan Bernstein: “It’s been a very long time since a true dark horse — a candidate who really came out of nowhere — won a presidential nomination. But we’ve had a couple of recent winners (John McCain in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004) who looked dead in the water for long periods of the year before the election. And we’ve had other candidates (Rick Santorum in 2012 and Gary Hart way back in 1984) who showed almost no signs of life until right before the Iowa caucuses but then went on to become serious challengers to the eventual winner.”

“I see a lot of pundits out there who want to reach conclusions about at least the structure of this cycle’s nomination struggle, if not proclaim a winner. I’m not averse to doing that when there’s strong evidence, as there was for Hillary Clinton in 2015. But there’s nothing close to that this time, and that means, to me, that we still don’t really have a good idea of where any of this is headed.”