First blood, fresh blood, and poor blood: That’s this week’s narrative in the presidential race.
Start with blood. This day in California, Representative Eric Swalwell finished his race for the Democratic nomination, shocking information for many Americans who had no idea he had been running in the first place. Swalwell will seek reelection to the U.S. House instead. He is the candidate to exit the race that is busy.
Swalwell’s effort was quixotic from the beginning, but unlike Cervantes’s hero, he never really journeyed anywhere. Swalwell was not able to construct much name recognition, even though managing to be eligible for the first Democratic debate in June. His most prominent moment came in the second night of that argument, when he challenged Joe Biden to hand off the torch to a younger generation. Biden laughed Swalwell off; Kamala Harris delivered the punch that Swalwell was hoping to land on the former vice president; and Swalwell much more or less vanished, ending up using the second-least amount of speaking time of the night, before only Andrew Yang. He was at risk of not making the next argument, in the end of July.
This is not necessarily an indictment of Swalwell; it’s just that it is difficult to get focus in this field. 1 common explanation for why long-shot candidates run is to increase their own profiles, and possibly Swalwell failed, but based on some Morning checkup survey, 50 percent of voters had never heard of himwith only his House colleague Seth Moulton fared worse.
It speaks well of Swalwell that he is able to read the writing on the wall when a lot of his rivals are still feigning illiteracy. While he may be the first to leave the race, he is likely to be joined by others before too long. Take John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado, who recently fired much of his staff and is attempting a relaunch. After initially seeming to attribute his former aides, he told a reporter in Iowa that the real issue was probably the offender. “Certainly the vast majority of the issue with the campaign was not being as great of a messenger as I need to be, however you can not switch or commerce in a new candidate,” he explained. That could be true of this Hickenlooper campaign, but voters can switch or trade in–not that a lot of these were in his corner in the first location.
Then, the new blood: Much as Swalwell prepares to exit, another Californian, the financier Tom Steyer, will enter the race, my colleague Edward-Isaac Dovere reports. I have written in this area multiple times that the area is finally at ability and will only shrink, and new candidates keep appearing. (Hello, Joe Sestak! Nice to see you, Steve Bullock!) Steyer is a fascinating case because he announced back in early January that he wouldn’t run. Yet despite seeing a field of coiffed white dudes fail to go anywhere, he’s seemingly tempted to try his hand anyway.
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