Tulsi Gabbard. LA Times/AFP.
Tulsi Gabbard has finally exited the 2020 presidential race and has endorsed Joe Biden. LA Times. She said that she didn't agree with all of Joe Biden's positions but that primary voters had decided he should be the candidate. She also praised Bernie Sanders, who is also still in the race, who she had endorsed in 2016. With her endorsement, fears or hopes of a third party run from Gabbard have disappeared. Gabbard ends her race a long time after many other candidates have and she had not been doing well in the elections, with no states being won. Gabbard's campaign focused on foreign policy but gained more headlines for her very public feuds with Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton.
My Comment:
And thus ends the campaign of the only Democratic Candidate I kinda liked in the 2020 race. Though I hated the vast majority of her policy positions I did agree with two of them. If it wasn't for those to policy positions, she's be yet another far left Democrat but the field was so weak this time around, she was the best of a bad bunch.
On foreign policy, I agreed with almost completely. She did say something really stupid about President Trump providing air support for ISIS, but other than that she was spot on. I have always said we were on the wrong side on the Syrian Civil War and that we shouldn't have gotten involved and Gabbard agreed. Gabbard was the only anti-war candidate in the race and it's no surprise that the Democrats hated her for it.
But it was her mutual hatred with Hillary Clinton that really sold me on Gabbard. Clinton was furious when Gabbard endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016, and she held that grudge until 2020. Clinton essentially sabotaged Gabbard's campaign and accused her of being a "Russian agent" which is a sure sign that Clinton was pissed.
Gabbard in turn blasted Clinton with the largely accurate accusation that her foreign policy was an absolute disaster. She even sued her for defamation when she accused her of being a Russian agent. This is probably why she got blackballed from the debates and essentially ignored for the rest of the race.
Gabbard never really had a chance to win though. There wasn't room for her in the 2020 race. Anyone that liked Clinton in 2016 hated Gabbard because she was so critical of her. That left the anti-Clinton left, who were largely divided between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Both of those candidates had a much more aggressive domestic policy than Gabbard did, leaving her with almost no supporters. About the only people that liked her were Republicans who liked her for the same reasons I did.
I do think that Gabbard had a good case that the DNC and the media were biased against her. The didn't let her into the debates and changed the rules against her when she qualified under the old rules. She also got very little in the way of coverage from the media outside of Fox News, where Tucker Carlson seemed to have a major crush on her.
I was very surprised that Gabbard endorsed Joe Biden. I think part of that is due to the fact that Sanders is essentially done. He's so far behind it's very unlikely he mounts a comeback and beats Joe Biden. But she did endorse Sanders in 2016 so it's unusual that she wouldn't back him again. Of course, Joe Biden isn't Hillary Clinton and he seems like a much less vindictive person that Hillary Clinton ever was.
I think that Gabbard's political career is probably over. She might be hoping that she could get a position in the Biden White House, but even in the unlikely chance that he does get elected I don't think Biden would be willing to anger Hillary Clinton. She isn't running for her congressional seat again and I can't see her winning anything else. It's sad as I'd prefer her brand of leftism to the neo-liberal consensus and the socialist wing of the party.
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