Will anyone else get into the Democratic race for president?
Part one of the “invisible primary” ended with the end of summer. On the Republican side the dominant theme was how high Donald Trump could go. On the Democratic side the dominant theme was whether or not Hillary’s problems were serious enough to induce someone else into the race. And so we saw some predictable bubbles; a short one for Secretary of State John Kerry, the party’s 2004 nominee, a slightly longer one for former Vice President Al Gore, the party’s 2000 nominee and winner of the popular vote, and an ongoing one for sitting Vice President Joe Biden, who has run for president unsuccessfully before but who now has new stature in the party.
As we head into the fall it’s fair to ask—is the Democratic field set? Or not? On the Republican side it probably is—with seventeen candidates in the race there aren’t many people who are not running for president. But in spite of all the talk about other candidates on the Democratic side that field is probably set as well. Putting aside the question of how serious Hillary’s problems are (I, for one, am not in the “bed-wetter” camp that is easily panicked) there are serious structural problems that will, very shortly, keep anyone who is not already in this race from getting in. Conventional wisdom says a candidate has to get in early in order to raise money. That’s true for unknowns but any of the nationally recognized candidates mentioned above could, thanks to the Internet, raise a fair amount of money pretty quickly. The more serious problem is that presidential nominees these days get elected in public primaries and public primaries have filing deadlines.
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2015/09/08-presidential-filing-deadlines-democrats-kamarck
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