Looks Like Our First Dem Campaign Deathwatch Is Already Underway

DICKENDONGLER IN DISARRAY111!!1!

Our first Campaign Deathwatch of the 2020 race is officially underway, as Politico reports John Hickenlooper's campaign is in very sad shape. But what about already-kinda-gone Howard Schultz, you ask? Ah, but you have to actually run before your campaign can expire, and Schultz never formally took the step beyond "exploring," so there. Dickendongler, on t'other hand, appears to have blowed up on the launch pad before he ever got any traction, and now all his sweet green icing's flowing down, to coin a phrase.

According to "a source familiar with the situation," Dirkendiegler's senior staff "urged him last month" (!!!) to gracefully bow out and either run for the US Senate or do something useful with his time, says Politico. The whole effort got beat up on with the ugly stick, it seems:

The source said that the campaign only has about 13,000 donors, making it  almost impossible to qualify for the next round of presidential debates in the fall. The campaign also  only raised just over $1 million in the second quarter — about what he raised in the  first 48 hours of his candidacy — and will likely run out of money completely in about a month.

At least five staffers have left or are leaving Hickenlooper's struggling operation, including his campaign manager, communications director, digital director and finance director. Hickenlooper named a new campaign manager on Monday night.

Obviously, Barkenbooper blames the departed and departing staffers. On MSNBC Tuesday, he told Craig Melvin, "We thought it was time to make a change [...] You know, these campaigns are long, hard campaigns and you don't always get it right with the first team."

Thank goodness he was able to offer a convincing reason for his failure to catch fire: Since he's just a regular feller, he has to be far more careful about making promises than those fancy big-name progressives and their policy proposals, you see.

"  I'm not going to get into it until we pull the numbers together," he added. "But the bottom line is for a small campaign like us … it's harder to raise money because we're not promising free health care or, you know, to forgive free tuition for everyone, forgive student debt."

Dude. You aren't going to pay for those programs out of your campaign funds. That would be illegal! There is literally no connection between being a "small campaign" and running on a platform that aims at using the power of government to make people's lives better. But yes, we suppose an Eat Your Broccoli platform may turn out to be less popular.

While Frippenfooper's numbers were good enough for last week's debate and for the upcoming debate in July, which has the same cutoff, making the debates after that will be tougher.

[His]  prospects for making the fall debates — candidates must have 130,000 donors and hit 2 percent in four qualifying polls — were dicier. The latest CNN poll released Monday shows Hickenlooper with just 1 percent support.

Linkyloofah's performance in the first debate didn't help a lot either.

With two dozen candidates running, Hickenlooper has struggled to break out from the bottom of the pack. He spoke for just five minutes in Thursday's debate, o  nly getting more airtime than political outsiders Andrew Yang and Marianne Williamson and California Rep. Eric Swalwell.

As yr Editrix noted, at least Williamson used her very limited time to make an impression, some of it actually good, like the Central America stuff. Frankly, we're surprised about Torchwell, who seemed to talk more than that -- guess shouting "millennial!" a bunch of times didn't take as long as it felt.

Unfortunately, LisaLoopner has so far "resisted calls to run for Senate," even though Chuck Schumer and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, chair of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, have tried to recruit him. And now that other Colorado Dems have announced runs against Republican Cory Gardner, SiftinSouper would have to make it through a primary if he does jump into the Senate race. HE SHOULD DO THAT ANYWAY. If he does, we might even stop calling him silly names.

Also, here's the saddest two sentences in the whole damn Politico piece:

Lauren Hitt, Hickenlooper's outgoing communications director,told POLITICO on Monday that campaign manager Brad Komar and finance director Dan Sorenson are no longer with the campaign.

"I will also be transitioning out over the next few weeks,"she said.

Add your own "turn the lights out as you leave" joke here, and now it is your OPEN THREAD.

[Politico / Photo:  Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons license 2.0 ]

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