We're still far from the first U.S. presidential primary and far from knowing the nominee who will take on U.S. President Donald Trump next year.

Tom Steyer, an American billionaire and fierce critic of President Trump, announced his candidacy Tuesday, joining a pool of more than 20 other candidates vying for the U.S. presidency.

The saturated field has seen its first dropout from the race. Congressman Eric Swalwell ended his bid after failing to gain traction.

The representative from California isn't the only one with low poll numbers. Only four presidential hopefuls are polling above five percent.

In one poll, Senator Kamala Harris shot to second place after her performance during the first democratic debate in June, confronting front-runner and former Vice President Joe Biden on his record on racism, civil rights, and busing.

Hilary Shelton, the Washington Bureau director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (NAACP), believes Biden’s apology for recent remarks about his work with segregationist senators will affect his campaign.

Biden argued the issue had been taken out of context and defended his willingness to work with whoever he needed to get the agenda at hand addressed.

“I think the issue that hurt him the most was when Kamala Harris raised the issue of busing in a very different context,” said Shelton.

Harris also has a controversial record. The New York Times ran an opinion piece some months ago with the headline "Kamala Harris was not a 'progressive prosecutor'". Shelton considers people are going to reassess her record during the time she was a prosecutor as well as her current record as a senator.

People have seen her sitting on the Judiciary Committee mantel, raising issues, challenging the Attorney General of the U.S. and challenging others on issues that are extremely important to the African-American community and other communities around the country. That record will come forward and we have to scrutinize that as well.

“I think what she has now, in terms of how she’s viewed, is the policy she is moving forward, eliminating some of those policies that she was in a position to have to defend as a prosecutor in California,” Shelton said.

Imani Cheers, an Associate Professor of Digital Storytelling at George Washington University, believes Biden has made a series of poor choices. Cheers believes Biden has been able to tally things up really well over the past 50 years, but his record on the 1994 crime bill he authored as a Senator, and the way he handled the 1991 Anita Hill hearings while chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is problematic.

“He has to reckon with his record but it’s not coming across – at least to me – as genuine,” said Cheers.

Cheers argues candidates' substance on policies is very important in the debate. There are a lot of voters who are not interested in a reality show. They want to know about candidates' positions on a range of issues including health care and immigration.

Cheers said the criminal justice system is going to be a big issue in this election.

“This country is coming to terms with the way in which our law enforcement treats citizens, especially about race and gender,” she said, adding that all the candidates should be judged on their history about this issue.

“Kamala was a prosecutor, that is her job, and the community where she was working in was a community with a large population of African-American and Latino. She has to answer the questions about her history,” said Cheers.

“In politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. Kamala Harris was able to get the best of Joe Biden,” said Political Commentator and Analyst Amy Holmes.

Holmes believes “sleepy Joe” can now be called “creaky Joe”, as he was not prepared for those attacks.

On the other hand, many voters who didn’t know Harris before saw a candidate who was strong and willing to take the fight directly to her opponent.

“What Joe Biden needs to do is talk about his plans for the future," said Holmes. "When he is apologizing, he is losing."

Making the election all about race is not a winning strategy for Democrats, said Holmes. She believes it's a trap for the Democratic Party to focus on a racial division and resentments. The winning strategy is to have a message that brings us all together and how we’re going to move our country forward, she said.

In fact, President Trump with all of his very inflammatory rhetoric in 2016 about illegal immigration got a higher percentage of the Hispanic vote than Mitt Romney did in 2012.

“So people look at the economic impact on their lives, including African-Americans who see immigration and illegal immigration competing away jobs that they would like to fill,” Holmes argued.

New York Post Associate Editorial Page Editor Michael Benjamin agrees with Biden’s opinion that most American voters lean center-left.

The party cannot afford to go too far left. It must remain focused on Donald Trump as it galvanizes voters to shop up to the ballot box whoever the Democratic candidate is.

“What will happen is that whoever has the best ground game for Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina will probably wind-up being the Democratic Party’s nominee,” Benjamin predicted.

The second democratic presidential debate is slated for the end of the month.

The Heat with Anand Naidoo is a 30-minute political talk show on CGTN. It airs weekdays at 7:00 a.m. BJT and 6:00 p.m. Eastern in the United States

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