Not enough fewer yet; this is the season of anxiety before we engage

All sighted in San Francisco, all gone. So Bernie won New Hampshire, barely; Mayor Pete and Senator Amy charged forward -- and nothing is much clearer. Can Bernie attract more voters beyond his hard core base? Possibly -- but given the fractured field in there with him, he also might be able to win the nomination without growing that base much. Others think they might have a shot -- and several might. The primary will lumber on ....

WAAAAA!! I think that's about where many, many, loyal, eager citizens who want dump Trump are coming to. We're fired up and the process tamps us down. We want an "electable" candidate whatever that means, but we're prepared to just get on with it as soon we someone is selected.

I went to a candidate house party over the weekend. What I saw was above all anxiety. Fear of a Trump re-election is so high that people have trouble choosing a candidate. They just want the nomination over. They don't want the responsibility for this part. I don't think that means they won't be there, at least to vote, in the fall. But this is stale and adds to our unease.

Jennifer Palmieri worked communications for the Hillary Clinton campaign. She reported from Iowa::

“The voters were so lost. They didn’t have any orientation, no grounding. . . . They felt paralyzed by this choice.”

From New Hampshire, Claire Malone from FiveThirtyEight saw something similar:

It’s not exactly an exuberant spirit that’s moving through the Democratic electorate right now, but rather a business-like frenzy to decide what their best course of action is.

One of Josh Marshall's correspondents echoes the sentiment:

If you’re a Democrat, the Democratic primary race is exhausting and demoralizing ...

We need to take a deep breath.

We should be encouraged that all the Democratic leaders remaining in the field generally poll ahead of Trump. Yes, Trump will be his crazy, vicious, cheating self, abusing whoever gets the nod. And yes, if we back off, he'll win. But if we do the work, this campaign is winnable. When an election is this closely balanced, that's all we can promise ourselves, but it's not nothing.