Jim Webb dropped out of the Democratic primary on Tuesday and said he would consider running as an independent if he were to gain enough support.
“I’m stepping aside from the Democratic primary process,” he said.
Webb has polled at less than 1 percent among Democratic voters, and acknowledged that he and the Democratic Party may not be a good fit.
“And I know I’m going to hear it, so let me be the first to say this: I fully accept that my views on many issues are not compatible with the power structure and the nominating base of the Democratic Party,” he said. “That party is filled with millions of dedicated, hard-working Americans. But its hierarchy is not comfortable with many of the policies that I have laid forth, and frankly I am not that comfortable with many of theirs.”
“For this reason I am withdrawing from any consideration of being the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidency,” he added.
But he also admitted that Hillary Clinton’s dominance for both his poor performance in last week’s debate as well as his inability to fundraise successfully.
“We had challenges creating an organization inside a democratic party where the expected nominee had a lot of control, a lot of leeway and that was then and I’m talking about the future now,” he said.
Webb was also hurt by a lack of funding. One of Webb’s major issues on the campaign trail was that he spent very little time campiagning. He skipped the Democratic National Committee summer meeting in order to move his daughter into college, and he refrained from campaigning on July 4th, just days after he announced his candidacy.
The campaign made it virtually impossible for reporters to learn of Webb’s schedule, which was mainly because he hardly travelled.
“We made visits, we didn’t make any visits as we could have. We didn’t have the financial resources to do it, or as many resources as we could have,” Webb said, explaining away his campaign’s struggles.
The former Republican claimed that the political system has become too divided today, and that the majority of Americans don’t identify as Republican or Democrat, himself included, because of the political extremism in both parties.
“Some people say that I’m a Republican who became a Democrat or that I sound like a Republican in a room full of Democrats or a Democrat in a room full of Republicans,” he said Tuesday afternoon at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. “But I think that our country is more important than a label.”
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Standing with his wife, Webb stated that while he is no longer in the Democratic primary, he would consider to push the issues he cares about, and would consider running on a third party ticket if he were to receive enough support from supporters.
His email announcing the event included a “contribute” button to keep soliciting donations.
As he removed himself from the race, Webb said that he was unsure if he would refer to himself as a Democrat going forward. He said he would take a few weeks to talk to people as he decides how to proceed next.
The former senator took pride is his status as an independent, boldly stating that if he were to gain steam as a third party nominee, he would defeat both the Republican and the democratic nominee.
One of his goals would be to rebalance the relationship between Congress and the White House. He said the presidency has “gained too much power,” while “Congress has grown weak and irrelevant.”
In his possible independent bid, Webb vowed to free up the “jammed political process” by working with both parties.
“Americans are disgusted by all this talk of Republicans and Democrats calling each other the enemy instead of reaching across the aisle and finding ways to work together,” the decorated war veteran told the small gathering of reporters. “I know what an enemy really is, from hard personal experience in combat. The other party in America is not the enemy; they are the opposition. In our democracy we are lucky to have an opposition.”
