Former Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., announced Thursday that he will not relaunch his presidential bid as an independent, citing the logistics as the main detterent.
Webb, who was speaking to the World Affairs Council in Dallas, said that an independent bid would be “enormously costly and time sensitive,” while adding that he did not have the money to make it viable.
“I’ve worked with both parties, including as an official in the Reagan administration and as a Democrat in the Senate. Both parties, in my view, have moved away from the major concerns of the average American,” Webb said. “We looked at the possibility of an independent candidacy. Theoretically it could be done, but it is enormously costly and time sensitive, and I don’t see the fundraising trajectory where we could make a realistic run.”
The former Virginia senator and secretary of the Navy took shots at candidates on both sides of the aisle still in the presidential contests, saying that “no one” in the field has a “firm understanding” of foreign policy.
“We have not had a clear statement of national security policy since the end of the Cold War, ” he said. “And I see no one running for president today who has a firm understanding of the elements necessary to build a national strategy.”
Webb’s previous bid for the Democratic nomination lasted only four months before he dropped out after the first Democratic debate. Since then, he has teased a potential third-party bid before squashing any such chatter in his address.
