The Democratic Party race to the 2020 nomination to face Orange Julius Cheeser will kick off with their first debate at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami, on the evenings of June 26-27. Yes, it’s a two-day extravaganza of wannabes, has-beens, never-wases, also-rans and contenders hosted by NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo, all children of NBCUniversal, of the House of Comcast.

The First of His Name

Speaking of ’20, that’s the number of candidates who will be invited to the debate, 10 for each of the nights. Assuming that no one else decides to declare for the nomination in the next three weeks, that means that there will be 4 candidates of the current two dozen who will spend the two nights tweeting butt-hurt from the sidelines.  That is not as bad as it seems, because the top guns in the middle of the actual furball are only going to get about 10 minutes each on average to stand out from the madding crowd.

Some broke, some addled, four out

Who gets an invitation depends on polling and an odd measurement of “grass roots” support. For polling, a candidate must poll more than 1% three times in “qualified” polls, which encompass an array of media and polling giants, including FOX News but NOT RRRRRasmussen! The polls can either be national surveys or from any of the early states: IA, NH, SC, NV.

So far, 20 candidates have reached this threshold. This is the first decider.

If more than 20 candidate qualify via polling, grass roots fundraising is the next determinant. This is measured by unique donors to a campaign: a minimum of 65,000 comprising at least 200 donors from 20 different states. For this reason, you may see an onslaught of requests for micro-donations to micro-candidacies over the next week, as only 13 campaigns have reached the 65k mark.

Lookin’ at you, Mike Gravel!

Further tie-breakers are almost as complicated to calculate as the NFL Wild Card spot, but still rely on these two basic measures in varying combinations. The final date to have reached qualifying status in either measure is next Thursday, June 13.  Candidates will be assigned to a night randomly, thus avoiding any “kiddie table” talk; but, sadly, the “clown car” comparison will remain apt.

Selfie: all the Dems who think they can win

What all this all but guarantees is that anyone in the game right now, with even the faintest of chances, will have an opportunity to run to every medium they can reach crying “I was robbed!” and that practically nothing will be resolved prior to Detroit, on July 30-31, when they get to do it all over again.