“With the record wins for women and minority candidates, Democrats in 2018 showed they were pretty sick of having white guys in Congress, so I’m not sure what makes these dudes think the White House will be different,” an aide working for a current Democratic campaign told The Daily Beast. “They’re much more the Rick Santorum model than Barack Obama: run for president to get famous, become known, and stop getting buried in obscurity as a House backbencher. They understand our media environment won’t really punish them for giving it a go, but they will not be the Democratic nominee, and if they were being honest they’d tell you they know that, too.”

For those white men actually running, questions of race and gender have proven tricky. Swalwell, a fourth-term congressman from the Bay Area and a familiar presence on cable news, defended his right to jump into the race as he hopped in a car to address a union event on Wednesday. “I don’t think anyone’s identity should keep them from running,” he said. “But I think you better see all the other identities out there.”…

“I think it’s frankly a travesty that folks have rushed to elevate Beto O’Rourke,” Symone Sanders, who served as national press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign in 2016, told The Daily Beast. “I wanted Beto to beat Ted Cruz just like every other good Democrat, but I don’t think that there was anything inherently special about him that made him better or different than Stacey Abrams or Andrew Gillum.”