New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday that he is bowing out the 2020 presidential race, thinning a still-overcrowded field of presidential hopefuls.
“I feel like I’ve contributed all I can to this primary election and it’s clearly not my time,” de Blasio said during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “So I’m going to end my presidential campaign, continue my work as mayor of New York City, and I’m going to keep speaking up for working people and for a Democratic Party that stands for working people.”
It is about time. The only question anyone should have is: What took him so long?
Even a blind man could see that he had no shot at winning. De Blasio polled regularly at 0% in surveys of potential primary voters. Few, if any, came to see him on the campaign trail. For crying out loud, the mayor is more unpopular in his own city than even President Trump. There was never a version of this reality where de Blasio was going come even close to clinching the Democratic Party’s nomination.
The mayor explained further in an op-ed published Friday by NBC News, “After several months of campaigning, I have reached the point where I feel I have contributed all I can to this Democratic primary.”
“This campaign has been a profound experience for me,” he adds. “I saw America in full — not as it appears on Twitter and cable news, where we’re constantly shown a country hamstrung by our differences and unable to tackle the problems we face. We have more in common than we realize — and more and more of us across the country are overcoming our divisions and standing up for working people.”
The mayor’s op-ed continues, recalling the primary as if it were not one massive embarrassment for his already badly battered political career. De Blasio, who worked a mere seven hours the month he announced his candidacy, promises that his mission going forward will be to keep “fighting for working people and ensuring that New York City remains the vanguard of progressivism.”
The funniest thing about the mayor’s 2020 campaign — aside from the part where he mercifully put it out of its misery — is not that he failed to register above 0% with potential voters. It’s that he managed, somehow, to be the most disliked candidate in a primary that is overflowing with unlikeable candidates.
There is South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the smug teacher’s pet. There is Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the scolding teacher. There is former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, the aimless suburban dad who is still trying to “find himself.” There is Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the irate early-bird enthusiast. There is also California Sen. Kamala Harris, RoboCop (but evil).
In this murderer’s row of exceptionally unlikeable characters, de Blasio’s star shone in unlikeability in a way his polling never did. Before he dropped Friday, the gigantic, loud-mouthed, varmint-murdering mayor was able out to carve out a spot for himself in the primary as the most-hated of the 2020 candidates.
That has got to count for something, right?
