“The conventional wisdom is that in a presidential election year where there's an open contest in the final 2 years of a two-term president, you have about an 8-month window to move things along. That doesn't mean you have to finish everything, but … you better be pretty close to field goal range at the end of that 8 months,” he said.
That seems likely to hold true this year given that, at last count, at least 26 members of Congress have announced or are considering announcing a run for the White House, Dr. Ornstein said.