Heilemann: So Many Candidates and So Little Clarity About the Shape of the Field

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
HEILEMANN: "I wouldn't exactly say it's so few dollars, Joe. In 2008, you had Hillary Clinton, a fund-raising juggernaut and Barack Obama, who was a star on the rise in a way that the party or very few of the Democrats this time around were. It was clear from the beginning of that race it was a three-person race. There were eight or nine people in the field but Obama, Clinton, Edwards were seen from the beginning as the top tier. Now there are so many candidates that are all competing for dollars and there's so little clarity about the shape of the field that a lot of traditional big dollar donors are waiting to see what the field is before they make a determination about who they want to be with and the low dollar is now the way that people tend to raise. So the combination of the change in the fund-raising landscape with this very populated, crowded field, with it being an unsettled field -- it's fair to compare the two but I'd be interested where we are in the third quarter after a couple of debates have shaken out and it's a little clearer what the top tier of the race is, whether they're still struggling or falling short to raise money. That would be a greater concern for Democrats at the moment. It's such a crazy field right now, I wouldn't be as concerned if I were a Rufus Gifford, I might think about the perspective from that point of view.”