And then there were 16.
Former Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak on Sunday shuttered his 2020 primary campaign. On Monday, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock did the same, narrowing the list of potential Democratic presidential nominees to a little more than a dozen.
Funnily enough, if you were to ask me last week who should drop out of the 2020 Democratic primary, I would not have said Sestak or even Bullock. I would have given you the same answer I gave in early November.
Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would do themselves a big favor by packing it in and going home. Unlike the candidates who dropped out this week, Booker, Harris, and Bloomberg stand to lose something the longer they stay in the 2020 primary.
Unlike Sestak and Bullock, the senators and former mayor are known entities on the Left. Booker, Harris, and Bloomberg spent years presenting themselves to the Left as successful, no-nonsense fighters. These reputations are already irreparably damaged (nothing says “fighter” quite like hanging on for dear life in a primary that ends eventually with a pathetic whimper). Why make things worse?
Take Harris, for example. What happened? The senator was a #Resistance star when she entered the 2020 primary. Since then, her polling has cratered, and her campaign is now the target of gossip and giggling in news media. Her pitiful 2020 collapse is the sort of thing that President Trump will highlight with a chuckle the next time she tries to tough-talk him or someone in his administration.
Booker, for his part, dubbed himself “Spartacus” during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. Now, Booker will be lucky if he even makes the next Democratic debate.
Then there is Bloomberg. The former mayor’s support for the “correct” political causes, including gun control, has won him a lot of leeway with Democrats and their allies in the press. But his inexplicable late entry into the 2020 primary threatens to undo all that goodwill he has purchased with his politics and literal bags of money. Things such as Bloomberg’s recent remarks praising communist China, or Bloomberg self-muzzling its coverage of the 2020 Democratic primary so as to avoid upsetting him, are going to become very interesting to the political party with which he now identifies.
And for what? A failed primary campaign?
Sure, you can criticize the candidates who dropped out this week. Bullock’s failed 2020 candidacy never made much sense anyway. The time and effort he wasted on his doomed White House ambitions would have been better spent on a campaign to flip the Senate seat held by Montana incumbent Republican Sen. Steve Daines. As for Sestak, you know how I feel about current and former members of the House running for president.
But Bullock and Sestak did not really harm themselves by running for president. In fact, if anything, they probably boosted their name recognition with the Democratic base, which may be useful should they try to make a go of it for different public offices. At least they can say they accomplished that much, which is more than Harris, Booker, and Bloomberg can say.
