South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg continues to build on his big moment at SXSW, and now sports a solid second-place with 18 percent. I’ve been open that I find that number distressing—a small-college-town mayor has no business being taken seriously as a presidential candidate. Indiana desperately needs solid candidates in upcoming Senate and governor races. Buttigieg could earn serious credibility points while helping build the statewide party in a Red state.

Hopefully that’s the game here—parlaying his growing name recognition from this race into a future statewide run. “Sen. Pete Buttigieg (D-IN)” would not be a bad long-term outcome.

Now before you Pete fans hate on me, give me a sec. There are a lot of candidates who I don’t personally find credible or worthy of the nomination. But who cares? The Republicans had something like 17 candidates in 2016, and we (or at least I) sat and laughed at them, thinking they were tearing each other up!

Instead, they had 17 candidates spreading the Republican message, talking to the various parts of their base (tea party nihilists, Christian theocrats, Wall Street). It worked far more effectively than our own binary contest.

So I’m happy we have a gazillion candidates, even if I think some of them are stupid or arrogant or delusional for running. They are spreading the good word, like missionaries, and (at least at this point) they’ve been keeping it positive. This can only help rally people in corners of the country a smaller field might miss, rallying voters who may not respond to more … orthodox politicians.

You can even see how the large field dilutes the toxicity of some of Bernie’s worst online supporters. Rather than focus their ire and bile against a single candidate (Hillary), this week they’re attacking Beto, last week it was Warren, next week it’ll be Pete … maybe that’s why Bernie’s intensity is fading. We could see the same Bernie sites pushing their readers to vote in the poll yesterday, yet their raw numbers came in far short. Hillary was an easy target. Perhaps even a motivating one! Maybe all that attacking is already getting exhausted, especially since none of the credible candidates in this race remotely represent what Hillary did, except probably Joe Biden, and he’s already looking anemic.

If Joe Lieberman or Andrew Cuomo was in the race, I would personally be motivated to be on the attack. If John Hickenlooper was more than an asterisk, I would unload on that asshole. But on policy and ideology, all the top candidates are actually pretty good-to-great! So it’s gotta be particularly tough for the hardcore Bernie crowd to get traction when they’re trying to paint Elizabeth Freakin’ Warren as a corporatist.

So do a lot of Bernie people have a favorite? Yes! It’s Bernie! I’ve got my favorites too! We can all have them!

But anyone that paints 2020 as a “my candidate or bust” situation really has no perspective or understanding of the myriad great choices we have. If I ranked the current field by order of preference, I’m at candidate 9 or 10 before I think “ugh.” We Democrats are in a good place.

In any case, back to Buttigieg, it’s clear he’s got real grassroots support. He’s seemingly taking directly from Sanders and Beto O’Rourke. I’m trying to see if there’s a “wing” of the party forming with that trio, but doesn’t seem that way. Kamala Harris had a big chunk of that support after her announcement, so no obvious pattern presents.

It just seems people are testing out the shiny new face when it pops up, kicking the tires, then moving on to the next shiny face. Buttigieg may suffer a similar fate, or he may continue to claw away at Bernie’s and Beto’s support. Maybe he picks up Joe Biden’s people if he bows out or continues his slow-mo implosion.

Harris and Elizabeth Warren appear stabilized. But where do they grow from there? Warren presumably needs Bernie to falter, and to be the beneficiary of his former supporters (and not Beto or Pete). Harris, at a minimum, needs to pick up Joe Biden’s strong African American support.

At some point, this race will become a chess match, but we’re not even there yet. We’ve taken the box, spilled out the pieces on to the table, and are simply trying to sort them out.

There’s a lot of campaign ahead of us.

p.s. Cory Booker and Julian Castro are both relegated. As far as this Straw Poll is concerned, it’s a six-person race.