Senate Democrats hope Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) decision to drop out of the crowded presidential field is a sign of things to come.
The anxiety in the Senate about the crowded race mimics the nervousness of Democratic voters who worry their party will blow a second presidential contest against President Trump and who see the 25-candidate race as a hindrance.
{mosads}Democratic senators also see a potential silver lining to a narrowing field: They are holding out hope that candidates like Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D), former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) could still run for the Senate.
“I’d like to get the debate into a one-night event. Right now, with 25 or whatever the number is, that’s hard to do,” said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.).
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said “it has to narrow down.”
Some candidates, such as Bullock, didn’t make the debate stage when 20 Democrats battled last month over two nights.
“It’s still early, but it still has to happen,” Tester said of a narrowing field. He singled out tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang and author Marianne Williamson, two long-shot candidates with low poll numbers who were both in the debate.
“For the supporters of Yang, I apologize, and the lady who writes the books,” said Tester, who complained that candidates got little time in the debate given the crowded stage.
Tester also said the big field makes it difficult for candidates who might be able to win over working-class moderates to gain any traction.
“For somebody like Bullock, if there were five or six candidates and he were one, it would improve his chances a lot. Same thing with Michael Bennet,” he said, referring to the Colorado senator.
Another Democratic senator who requested anonymity to discuss the field praised Swalwell for dropping out early and setting an example for other low-polling candidates.
“I think it’s good to narrow it down, and there will be more,” the lawmaker said. “The next probable narrowing-down is September.”
“I can’t imagine being on stage with a total of 10 people and trying to answer [questions],” the lawmaker added. “It’s a very challenging format.”
CNN will air the next round of debates in Detroit, again over two nights on July 30 and 31.
Candidates must average more than 1 percent in three qualified polls or have more than 65,000 unique donors to their campaigns to make it onstage. The 20 candidates who qualify will be notified later this month.
A second Democratic senator expressed concern that the party’s message has become too scattered because of the large field of candidates. The lawmaker warned that could give Trump and the Republican Party a big head start in delivering a unified message to voters.
“If there was a way to sort this out more quickly it would be a lot better for us,” the lawmaker said, predicting that Trump will have an uncontested path to the GOP nomination and quickly move into general-election mode.
The senator expressed disappointment that shortly after Swalwell announced his decision to drop out, billionaire Tom Steyer said he would run for president and spend $100 million on his campaign.
The former hedge fund manager, however, may have trouble qualifying for the next debates in Detroit.
NBC News analyst Jonathan Allen declared Trump the winner of the first Democratic debates.
“Trump and the Republican Party are locked and loaded,” Allen said. “He’s staying on message and he’s hitting the themes and he’s going to be doing it all the way, for 16 months.”
He wrote that for long stretches of the debate the candidates seemed to forget about Trump as they fired shots at each other.
“The motivation to beat each other was, on this night, more urgent than defeating Trump — life-or-death moment for some of their campaigns,” he wrote. “Trump was the chief beneficiary of that dynamic.”
Democrats also saw some encouraging signs in the first round of debates, such as the blockbuster ratings of the second night, when former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) clashed over federally mandated busing. Nearly 15.3 million people tuned in to watch the first night, while 18.1 million watched the second night.
{mossecondads}Senate Democrats hope that if the field winnows, it could free up promising candidates to run for Senate in Montana, Texas and Colorado.
“We won’t give up on anybody,” said the first Democratic senator, who is holding out hope that O’Rourke or Bullock might reconsider running against Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), respectively.
“They have to make their own decisions, but we would certainly welcome to take another look and get back to us on their own time frame,” the senator said.
Another Democratic senator said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is still pursuing those prize recruits.
“I don’t think Schumer ever gives up on these guys,” the lawmaker said, noting that it took a lot of persuading to get Marine veteran Amy McGrath to run against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Tester said fellow Democratic senators are bugging him “every day” to get Bullock to change his mind and run for Senate. But he said he didn’t know what outreach Schumer had made to the governor.
A Senate Democratic strategist familiar with recruiting, however, said that Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairwoman Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) hasn’t spoken to Bullock, O’Rourke or Hickenlooper “for months.”