Washington Governor Jay Inslee ends his 2020 presidential campaign.

Governor Jay Inslee portrait. State of Washington.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee has announced that his is exiting the 2020 Democratic Presidential race. AP. Inslee ran a single issue campaign focused on global warming. Inslee said that he would support whoever the nominee is and said he realized he didn't have a chance to win. Inslee will now decide if he wants to run for a third term of Washington Governor. The Governor had not qualified for the 3rd Democratic debate. He had enough donors but did not reach 2% in enough polls to qualify. 

My Comment:

Another one bites the dust. Inslee joins Eric Swalwell and John Hickenlooper in dropping out of the race. As expected, after the 2nd Democratic debate the field is narrowing considerably. I fully expect more presidential candidates to leave the race soon. With such a wide and wild field sooner or later some of these people are going to have to drop out. By my reckoning none of them have a chance to beat President Trump but only a few, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, have a chance to be a candidate. 

Inslee strikes me as a "push" candidate. His goal was much like Eric Swalwell. Neither candidate had any realistic chance of ever being president but they did have issues they wanted to publicize and force the other candidates to focus on the issue. In Eric "nukem" Swalwell's case it was gun confiscation but in Inslee's case it was global warming. 

However, while Swalwell was effective in pushing the Democratic Party off the cliff that is gun confiscation, Inslee didn't seem to do much. Global warming came up in the two debates but I didn't think there was any change in any of the candidates positions. If that's the case than Inslee's run was pretty much completely pointless. 

Part of the problem for him is that all the candidates are on the same page on Inslee's pet project. There was some difference on gun rights but all of the candidates were supporting action on global warming. There might have been some disagreement on how to do that but nobody in the Democratic Party was really going to disagree with the idea that something needs to be done It would be the equivalent of someone on the GOP side focusing on abortion. What's the point if everyone agrees with you? 

I also think that Inslee had very little impact in either debate. I watched the entirety of both of them, somehow, and I don't remember any moments with him at all. He was present at both debates but he did not do much of anything with the time he was given. He didn't even make any gaffes that would have gotten him attention. He was just a non-factor. 

It's unclear if Inslee will now focus on a governor run. He's a 2nd term governor and though Washington has no term limits, it's rare for a governor there to run for a third term. My guess is that he probably will run and given how leftist Washington is, due to the dominance of Seattle on the rest of the state, he will probably win. He also has the advantage of incumbency, which is always a huge advantage. I do sincerely hope that he loses or doesn't run but I doubt that will happen.