Top Reasons Crowd-Sourcing the Democratic Candidate Might be Just the Ticket

I detect a new distress across the spectrum of those who are preparing to select a Democratic nominee for president from the crowded field of candidates:  

"It doesn't work to have so many candidates." "We need a winning candidate now."  "We can't wait."  "We need to have our platform, our cabinet, our message all together NOW."  

These are just some of the things I have heard expressed in the past few days from friends and strangers.    

When I feel preoccupied with a sense that something has gone badly awry, no matter what it is, from some mundane household matter to affairs of state, I can sometimes shift my state of mind to see a way that all is well, despite evidence to the contrary. This shift, particularly if many feel it together, also increases the possibility that the better outcome will occur.

So the question I began to ask myself is what are some ways in which having a crowded Democratic field actually helps produce a winning candidate?  Here are my top five (sometimes redundant and contradictory) ways in the crowded Democratic field may help produce the best candidate:

1.  No Sitting Duck.  With an ever-shifting array of candidates and possible front runners, there is no sitting duck candidate for the president, Koch brothers, or Russian bots to focus on.  They can try to go after all Democrats at once but that's not that effective.
2. Shell Game. This is basically the same point as above but I like the phrase "shell game."  The shifting array of candidates confuses and deflates the opposition.  Lift up one candidate they are attacking? Nothing under here.  Is this your candidate to attack? What about this one? 
3. Joe Biden takes the hits and protects the field.  Even if Biden takes most of the flack right now as the putative frontrunner, he may well not be the best person to beat the president (subject for a different post, but that's what I think) so even if he eventually loses the way he has very badly in his last 2 races (lest we forget he has never even come close to gaining traction as a presidential candidate before), maybe that's what he is here to do: be the closest we have to a frontrunner, take the hits, protect the rest of the field until the real winner can emerge.  This point may seem to contradict reasons 1 and 2 but I don't think they're mutually exclusive.  There are a LOT of great candidates.  And they will all have an opponent who, while not to be underestimated, is his own worst enemy and therefore, eminently beatable.
4. Crowd-sourcing the best messages.  In previous campaigns, the winning messages were developed in a back "war" room by political geniuses like James Carville.  But that was pre internet and pre ginormous field of candidates.  What I see happening very quickly now is that the best messages are moving from the ground up.  They either gain traction or they don't but when they do, they spread like the Green New Deal from AOC to Bernie Sanders to Joe Biden.  Or like "saving the soul of the country" from Marianne Williamson to Bernie Sanders to Joe Biden.   (Note, this will also snuff out the losing messages and, yes, there is a risk of a message picking up speed that's attractive for Democratic base but alienates "centrists" -- not sure how many of these so-called centrists remain, yet another post)
5. Crowd-sourcing the best candidate.  With more people in the field, it may be possible that more voices will be heard and a better, winning, wonderful voice will be able to emerge.  As the president and the Russians take down Biden, the rest of the field keeps moving, perhaps longer than they would if there were a, heaven forfend, Hillary Clinton style frontrunner in the race.  Eventually, of course, the field thins but by then a good evolutionary experience has taken place and the eventual candidate emerges stronger, burnished but not tarnished, by the experience, with a lovely platform of winning strong policies and messages to campaign on.  

This isn't just a trick to stay positive even when things are "really" going to hell in a hand basket.  In the quantum field, the ground of all being, there are simultaneously multiple possibilities occurring or becoming at any given time.  Without going into detail with my crude understanding of the science behind it, suffice it to say that it is well established that (human) consciousness collapses possibilities into probabilities.  The more of us believe, feel, know and choose something, the more likely it becomes.   

So help me out here, what are some ways you see that the crowded field is the perfect way to win in 2020?