DEM-OLITION TIME
Next debate may cut half the hopefuls
The clown car that is the Democratic primary field will likely get a lot less crowded.
More than half of the 20 White House hopefuls who took the debate stage Tuesday and Wednesday in Detroit currently fall short of the standards to earn an invite to September’s next round in Houston — including Mayor de Blasio and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
To whittle down the mob of aspirants, the Democratic National Committee has imposed strict requirements to get another crack at winning over a national television audience.
Candidates have until Aug. 28 to both receive contributions from at least 130,000 unique donors and crack 2 percent in at least four major polls, as determined by the DNC, if they want to get to Space City.
Those numbers represent a doubling of the standards required to qualify for this week’s contests in Detroit.
The seven heavyweights who have already punched their tickets are front-running former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, California Sen. Kamala Harris, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Of the baker’s dozen presently on the outside looking in, three candidates have already fulfilled one of the two criteria and are widely expected to qualify.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar has ranked highly enough in polling but still needs the support of about 10,000 more financial backers.
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and businessman Andrew Yang have garnered enough donations, but both still need to rank highly enough in one more poll.
Yang — whose outsider campaign is underpinned by his promise of giving every adult American a $1,000-per-month “Freedom Dividend” — announced on Monday that he had qualified, only to have the DNC reject one of the polls in which he topped 2 percent.
Assuming those three make the cut, that still leaves 10 candidates who participated in the second round out in the cold for the third.
Notable names among those unlucky 10 include social-media darling Marianne Williamson, fiery Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and the two New York politicians, Gillibrand and de Blasio.
Any candidates who fail to qualify for Texas can, of course, forge ahead with their campaigns, but they will do so without critical prime-time exposure.
Depending on how many of the candidates ultimately make the cut, the Houston leg will unfold over either one or two nights in September. As of now, Sept. 12 and 13 are slated.
Should those cut from that round still keep their hopes alive, they can at least continue to bolster their résumés and potentially tag back in for the fourth debate, set for October.