| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. The end of Julian Castro's presidential campaign on Thursday offered another opportunity to complain about the nomination process, and plenty of pundits have been doing just that. After all, Castro has more relevant experience than South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who remains a contender, and he's far more qualified than entrepreneur Andrew Yang or activist Tom Steyer, both of whom scored invitations to the November and December debates. Castro's final debate was in October. But while I'm a Castro fan (I live in San Antonio, where he was once mayor), it's hard for me to see any legitimate complaints about the process in this case. I'd agree that Castro in some sense deserved to be one of the remaining candidates, but presidential elections aren't really about what candidates deserve. Castro had his chance, and for whatever reason he failed to attract much support. He was going nowhere in the polls, both nationally and in the early states, and he ended up at only 1% in Nevada, where plenty of Latino voters joined white Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire in ignoring him. Castro didn't fare much better among party actors. He ended his campaign in seventh place in endorsements as tallied by FiveThirtyEight (or in ninth place if you include previous dropouts). He failed to dominate endorsements in his home state of Texas and failed to make progress with high-profile Democrats, including Latinos, anywhere else. In Seth Masket's surveys of early-state activists (the latest is out now), Castro typically drew more support than Yang or Steyer, but never showed much strength. If neither voters nor party actors wanted Castro, then, it's hard to complain too much about a process that pushed him out. The same is true of almost all the other candidates who have exited early. (The exception was Senator Kamala Harris, who wasn't so much eliminated by the process as by her own high-risk campaign strategy.) One lesson of these early exits is that the process is increasingly national. For all the talk about the Iowa and New Hampshire contests — and they're still important — they weren't going to save Castro, Harris, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, or any of the other candidates already winnowed. (Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of the parent company of Bloomberg Opinion, is also a presidential candidate and remains in the race.) Another lesson is about the importance of party backing. When Castro didn't show impressive support either in Texas or among Latino leaders, other party actors most likely read that as a sign of broader weakness. That alone didn't knock him out; Buttigieg has thrived without endorsements, for instance. But in every Democratic nomination cycle since 1984, winning has eventually required quite a bit of party backing, and Castro fell short. One more thing. Yes, it's a strike against the party that no Latino candidate will make it to Iowa in this cycle. But that's not so much a consequence of the presidential nomination process as it is a failure to nominate a more diverse group of candidates for statewide offices in winnable states. So at least until someone beyond the flukish Donald Trump proves he or she can win the nomination without party support, I'm not going to get too worried about the order in which the eventual losers drop out. Castro was in long enough that he was able to contribute to the policy debate within the party. That's not bad. And it brings us to the biggest lesson: Once again, I urge everyone to look at this from the point of view of the party, not the candidates. What really matters for the party is having a mechanism to thrash out policy disputes and a process that binds the eventual nominee to the party's choices. On the surface, everything may seem fairly chaotic right now. But look beyond the horse race and what you'll see is the party moving toward agreement and compromise where it's possible — and toward candidates, in most cases, who would be willing to act as partisan presidents if elected. 1. B. Kal Munis, Richard Burke, Nicole Huffman and Connor Munis at the Monkey Cage on former Vice President Joe Biden's appeal to voters. 2. Dan Drezner on what former Trump officials owe the country. 3. Lee Drutman on the two-party system. Drutman is one of those people I especially urge anyone who reads my stuff regularly to check out, since he's a smart guy who I strongly disagree with about a whole lot of things. 4. Andrew Exum on the death of Qassem Soleimani. 5. Heather Hurlburt also on Soleimani's death. 6. My Bloomberg Opinion colleagues Ramesh Ponnuru and Michael R. Strain on the state of the Republican Party and other reasons for optimism or pessimism in 2020. 7. And Greg Sargent on the risks facing Senate Republicans. One crucial point: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't run the Senate; any 51 senators run the Senate, especially during an impeachment trial. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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