The media is a messaging operation. It's in the business of trying to create its own reality, not reporting on reality.

Ever since Senator Kamala Harris announced that she was running, the media kept calling her a frontrunner. And yes, she usually is in the top 3 or 4.

Technically.

Except she's usually way back there and not all that far ahead of her competitors out back.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are leading the rest of the Democratic presidential primary field by double digits, according to a new poll released Tuesday by Morning Consult. Biden, who has yet to announce whether he will enter the 2020 race, leads the pack with 31 percent, the survey found. Coming in a close second is Sanders, with 27 percent support among Democratic primary voters.

Where's Kamala?

The Morning Consult poll shows Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) with 11 percent support among Democratic primary voters, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) took 7 percent and 6 percent respectively. When it comes to Democratic primary voters in the four early-voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — Biden and Sanders have even more support, with 34 percent and 29 percent respectively. Harris takes 8 percent support among voters in those states, according to the Morning Consult poll.

These are bad numbers.

The Dem 2020 race for now is between Biden and Bernie Sanders. That's not surprising because they both neatly fit into the same slots as the 2016 race which split down between the old Dem machine and the hard left. It's not clear that there is much space for another lane. And while the polls may say that voters don't want a seventy something or a socialist, Biden and Bernie are the second choices of their respective voters.

The rest of the field doesn't have that much name recognition. And maybe Kamala Harris will benefit from a national audience the way that Obama did. Elizabeth Warren very clearly won't. She's had a lot of years of marketing with little result even in New Hampshire.

But it might be time for the media to start reporting on the election honestly, and for pigs to start flying.