Bill DeBlasio Drops Out Of Presidential Race
New York City's Mayor ends a campaign that was going nowhere.
New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who entered the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination at a late date and never managed to break out of the lowest-tier pack of candidates receiving 1% or less support in the polls, has dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination:
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday morning that he will end his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, citing his struggles to qualify for the party’s primary debates.
“I feel like I’ve contributed all I can to this primary election, and it’s clearly not my time,” de Blasio told the hosts of 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,” he said.
De Blasio has struggled to draw more than single-digit support in national surveys of Democratic voters, and acknowledged his inability to meet the polling and donor thresholds for the party-sanctioned televised debates was the “central reason” behind his withdrawal from the primary race five months before the Iowa caucuses.
“The bar is so high so early that for a lot of us, clearly, some of my fellow chief executives, governors couldn’t make that cut,” he said. “It’s clear to me that’s a high bar and it’s one that I’m not going to be able to meet.”
Here’s the video of DeBlasio’s announcement:
As I said above, DeBlasio entered the race rather late, in mid-May after having flirted with the idea for several months beforehand. As I noted at the time, it was hard to see what niche he would be filling in the field that wasn’t already covered by other, arguably more qualified candidates. As expected, DeBlasio did not manage to break out of the pack despite receiving at least enough support to qualify for the first two debates. Most recently, though, he had come under fire back home in New York City due to the fact that he seemed to be neglecting his duties as Mayor in favor of a race for President that was obviously going nowhere.
No word on which candidate his supporter will back.
OK, zero comments. Somebody’s gotta say the obvious – Bill who?
And to think he could have used this song for a campaign anthem.
I thought he had dropped out already…..
Let’s just refuse to acknowledge vanity candidates.
Though, how do we differentiate between vanity candidates and those with little to no chance but have interesting ideas?
I don’t fully retract my last comment because dude had zero chance plus zero new or interesting ideas, but there are candidates who are very unlikely to win who do.
Semi-retract. Not all also-rans are without value.