While Democrat's Primary is Overshadowed by Impeachment, That's Not Why So Few Are Paying Attention

For all the talk about how fired up Democrats are to beat Trump, its not translated into much interest

By David Marcus

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Texas Insider Report) — With barely a month to go before the Iowa Caucuses, Democrat Party hopefuls should be accelerating into the news cycle like a Formula 1 Race Car. But, thus far the Democrat race has looked more like a skateboard on the beach… Their debates have been roundly ignored and the Democrat primary seems virtually invisible.

To steal a joke from Bob Newhart, its practically got a negative rating.

Honestly, how can this be? After all, a contest to decide which Democrat hero will square off against a president most in the media view as a combination of Darth Vader, Hitler and Benedict Arnold should be a hot item.

The Democrat race features the first prominently gay major candidate, and a woman poised to capture the nod for the fairer sex a second straight time. Joe Biden is bringing his “Aw shucks guy A game,” and Bernie Sanders is yelling as loud as ever.

Yet, there are a few plausible reasons why this primary just can’t seem to get much traction.

One often cited reason is that Democrats have essentially overshadowed their own primary with impeachment. After all, networks like CNN and MSNBC that should be laser-focused on the primary instead spend approximately 58 out of every 60 minutes predicting Trump’s imminent doom… as they’ve been doing for three years straight.

Given the “historic” nature of this impeachment and all the “bombshells,” there’s just not a lot of oxygen left in the green room for primary punditry.

Deepening this self-inflicted wound is the fact that several senators – who are the party’s leading presidential candidates – may end up off the trail, as they’re required to be present for impeachment proceedings and cloistered in a Senate trial for as long as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cares to keep them.

It’d be a mistake to place all the blame for the lackluster reaction to the Democrat’s presidential race on impeachment, or on the coverage of Trump’s supersized personality as it has been generating.

These are factors to be sure, and as often as the media warns itself against being all Trump all the time, they just can’t quit him.

But in fact, one of the biggest reasons for the boredom is the primary itself… and its candidates.

To see why, it’s useful to compare this current Democratic primary to the last GOP primary.

Both contests featured large fields, that by the December before Iowa had settled into a race between a top four. Like Biden today, Trump was hovering in the high 20s, with Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson each about 10 points back. That looks a lot like Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and to a lesser extent Pete Buttigieg.

But there’s a huge difference here: while Trump was a shocking front-runner, Biden is the most conventional candidate in the race.

Americans of every political stripe were transfixed by what most everyone thought was the Trump train wreck. The majority of Republicans in December 2015 were saying to themselves, “He can’t really win, can he?”

Even Democrats were saying, “He can really win! Can’t he?”

Meanwhile, the 25-to-30? of Republicans who had gone full MAGA were filling stadiums left and right and shouting their love of Trump to the high heavens.

Clearly there’s nobody out there doing much shouting about Joe Biden.

This could all change quickly. Impeachment may soon be a speck in the rearview mirror as Iowans caucus. That result can, as it often has, reshape the race and give it some vim and vigor.

Current Iowa leader Buttigieg has a chance to catch a spark. A strong Biden showing could solidify his lead, or there could be some unexpected surprise.

But for now the race remains in the doldrums. That’s a curious thing.

Perhaps it’s why polls show so many Democrats saying they are interested in a new candidate.

Those are shoes that Michael Bloomberg would like to fill. But despite spending more on TV ads than NASA spends on space, his 5% polling is anything but astronomical.

This primary election needs some juice, and it needs it fast. If it remains a snoozefest and an afterthought, the eventual nominee will limp into the convention fighting Trump with little wind at his or her back.

David Marcus is New York Correspondent for The Federalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, National Review, The Weekly Standard, and City Journal. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.

Joe Biden by IowaPolitics.com is licensed under Wikimedia
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