There's a podcast about what it's like to set up and run and promote your own small business.

It's called Vanguard by Shopify Studios.

If you're running your own small business or planning to one day, you might learn a thing or two from Vanguard.

New episodes every Wednesday.

The federal government is almost completely shut down today, but it's not about a wall, it's not about a budget deal.

It's President's Day. And how fitting that on President's Day 2019, over 20 months away from Election Day, we already have enough people running to field a football team.

There's Elizabeth Warren. She's running. Kamala Harris. She's definitely running.

Kirsten Gillibrand. The brand is strong. Cory Booker. Who's he dating? Pete Buttigieg. Who? Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, John Delaney, Marion Williams, and Andrew Yang.

You've got to be kidding.

And that's not even counting the half dozen or so dudes who are all but certain to declare.

How are we already so deep in this? We just had an election.

Well, there's the short version and the long version.

John Dickerson has been covering presidential campaigns for over 20 years and he co-hosts Slates Political Gadfest Podcast.

So the short version is it's a crowded field with no clear front runner. Everybody wants first-movers advantage.

If you can be the first person to capture everybody's attention, then attention and name ideas partially what you want.

And the long version?

Can we hold a blame for campaigns starting earlier and earlier and earlier? Are people like either John Kennedy or Jimmy Carter?

Kennedy in 1960 basically said the old style of picking people through the back rooms is a bad idea.

We should expose ourselves to the voters during the primaries and that's the true test for an election.

Well, that moves everything up. So it used to be you picked it at the nominating convention.

Now you've got to go through all these primaries and Kennedy argued successfully and obviously by winning it was a successful argument.

But he argued basically you couldn't be a good president unless you had talked to the people and felt the needs of the people.

...