Everybody knows these Democrats will probably run for president - so why won’t they say it?

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NBC News

They're traveling to New Hampshire, interviewing campaign teams, and honing their stump speeches. They're angling to take on a president who made his own 2020 intentions official nearly two years ago.

So why won't the two dozen or so Democrats we all know are likely to run for president just come out and admit it?

It turns out that that, like saying Beetlejuice's name too many times, uttering the magic words “I’m running for president” triggers a host of headaches — in this case, legal and political complications. So most potential candidates won't say it until they have to, even if they aren’t fooling anyone — except maybe the willfully fooled Federal Elections Commission.

It turns out that that, like saying Beetlejuice's name too many times, uttering the magic words “I’m running for president” triggers a host of headaches — in this case, legal and political complications. So pre-declared candidates are careful to always speak in the subjunctive tense — all “ifs” and “mights” and no “whens” and “wills." The point is to be freed to set a timeline for strategic reasons, rather than legal ones. That held true even after he accidentally told reporters “I'm running for president” instead of his usual phrasing that he was “excited about the possibility of running for president.”

“The fact of his candidacy is so apparent, and so overt, that Bush himself has found it hard to maintain what is really the ongoing charade of his purported non-candidacy,” the heads of the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 wrote in a letter to the Justice Department.

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