Senator Kamala Harris, one of the 4,356 Democratic presidential candidates running in the 2020 election, has dropped out. Though she was at first considered a front-runner, Harris’s campaign suffered fallout from a few serious missteps over the last year, including a muddled response to criticism of her prosecutorial record, a severely limited student-debt-forgiveness plan, and most recently, shake-ups within her staff that left former employees disgruntled.
I know what you might be thinking: Okay, there is a bit more breathing room now in this clown car. Except you would be wrong. There is still precious little air in here as we barrel toward the primary, and the oxygen we do have is being sucked up by a group of laughably low-polling and extremely uncompelling men. And Tulsi Gabbard and Marianne Williamson.
Plenty of candidates who were polling far below Kamala Harris remain in the running for president. Though Steve Bullock and Tim Ryan, two other semi-anonymous male candidates, recently decided to end their campaigns due to lack of success and enthusiasm, there are still plenty left who refuse to concede the obvious. For example, here is John Delaney, talking about how candidates should be “rolling” out plans while rolling out his abs. Delaney has not been on a debate stage since July and is still polling at zero percent in Iowa. Delaney is still running.
And here is Michael Bennet, a guy from somewhere, polling below one percent, still rolling out a five-day tour in New Hampshire.
We have Deval Patrick and Michael Bloomberg, men who decided to get into this mess just a few short months before the Iowa caucuses and who have little to offer other than being moderates who are not Joe Biden. Remember Tom Steyer, a man who has a company or some such thing? Yes, he is still here too.
Even outside of the do-you-even-know-who-these-men-are category, there are more candidates who can’t pull poll numbers over 3 percent but won’t admit it’s time to go home. This includes Marianne Williamson, who has wisely started a new self-help venture; Tulsi Gabbard, who has been tweeting intensely at Hillary Clinton; and Andrew Yang, universal basic income king with no prior political experience. The unifying trait they all share is that they have nothing to lose.
That Kamala Harris — a solid if troubled candidate, a current U.S. senator with serious name recognition — decided to cut her losses and get out of the race, what makes this ragtag band think they are doing anybody any good wasting their money and clogging our feeds with merch?
