Beware of Silly-Season Campaign Reporting

We’ve apparently reached the silly season of nomination politics. That’s not surprising. There is, after all, very little happening on the surface at the moment. The basic stories about most of the top candidates have been told. And there hasn’t been much movement either in the polls or in endorsements for weeks. Even the latest round of campaign-finance reports was fairly dull. As Nate Silver points out, this is exactly the formula that gets reporters chasing new — and potentially dubious — stories.

And so we get late speculation about new candidates jumping into the race, fueled by quotes from big donors who aren’t thrilled with the current lineup. It’s usually safe to ignore these stories. As Dave Hopkins points out, this is likely a case of donors who have contacts among journalists and pundits and who want to promote some politician on their wish list. Is it possible someone else could still jump in? Perhaps. But it’s getting very late to mount a serious effort, and most of the evidence suggests that Democrats are pretty happy with the field of candidates they have.