I have to agree with Samantha Bee on this one (Updated)

The first two Democratic presidential primary debates in June and July have a ridiculously low threshold to qualify to participate: A candidate will need to either have at least 1 percent support in three qualifying polls or provide evidence of at least 65,000 individual donations from a minimum of 200 different donors in at least 20 states.

The first debate in June will be limited to the top 20 candidates.

The following two debates in September and October only marginally increase the threshold to qualify to participate: A candidate will need to either have at least 2 percent support in three qualifying polls or provide evidence of at least 130,000 individual donations from a minimum of 400 different donors in at least 20 states.

I’m sorry, but no. I have to agree with Samantha Bee on this one. (Warning: “Not safe for work” — it is Samantha Bee after all).

In my view, if a candidate has not broken out in order to be competitive in polling by Labor Day, it ain’t gonna happen for you: get out of the presidential race and do something useful with your life, like run for the U.S. Senate to take it away from “The Enemy of The People,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the self-proclaimed Grim Reaper and the man who killed the Senate. A Democratic president will achieve little or nothing as long as the Senate is controlled by this demonic authoritarian and his crew of winged-monkey Republicans.

Says Bee: “Mitch McConnell’s awfulness gets only a fraction of the attention Trump’s awfulness gets, so instead of focusing on the president tonight we thought we’d do something no one in the history of the world has ever wanted to do, get to know this guy, the dry rot of democracy.” (NSFW).

According to the 2020 U.S. Election Calendar compiled by Politics1, the early candidate filing deadlines before the Iowa Caucus on February 3 , 2020 – when the presidential field normally thins out – are:

November 8, 2019:
Alabama – Filing Deadline (Primary)

November 11, 2019:
Arkansas – Filing Deadline

December 2, 2019:
Illinois – Filing Deadline (Major Parties)
North Carolina – Filing Deadline (Major Parties)

December 6, 2019:
California – Filing Deadline

December 9, 2019:
Texas – Filing Deadline (All Parties)

December 11, 2019:
Ohio – Filing Deadline (Major Parties)

January 10, 2020:
Mississippi – Filing Deadline

January 25, 2020:
West Virginia – Filing Deadline (Major Parties)

January 28, 2020:
Kentucky – Filing Deadline (Major Parties)

The early filing deadlines affect one candidate in particular, Beto O’Rourke in Texas. He made the Senate race close in Texas last year, so why not try again against Sen. John Cornyn?

And as Samantha Bee points, out, Governor Steve Bullock of Montana and former Governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado should be running for Senate in their respective states. They are popular in their own states.

And whatever Stacey Abrams has decided to do in Georgia, she needs to reconsider and run for the Senate in Georgia.

There are also congressional seats, governorships and attorney general seats that these candidates could and should be running for instead of pretending to run for president – 1% and 2% in polling? – puh-lease. Enough already.

Taking back the Senate is equally as important as taking back the White House. The time for fun and games is over, it’s time to get down to serious business.

UPDATE: Colbert King of the Washington Post writes “The sheer volume of noncompetitive competitors is a distraction that Democrats can ill afford, given the enormity of the disaster at hand.” “This is no time for Democrats to humor the ambition of newbies seeking to enter the big time or to pamper grizzled veterans out for a last hurrah.” All these wannabe Democratic nominees are wasting everybody’s time. “Democrats simply don’t have the luxury of engaging in months of intramural infighting that ends up trashing those most electable against Trump. The last thing they need is a battered nominee limping into the general election.”

A Suffolk University-USA Today poll released this week found The 2020 candidates that Democratic voters most want to see drop out of the race:

There are only five candidates to receive more than 2 percent support in the poll, former vice president Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.