The real reason Jay Inslee just dropped out

| 11:30 pm EDT August 21, 2019
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Washington Governor Jay Inslee said he was getting into the 2020 Democratic primary race for president because he specifically wanted to raise awareness for climate change. He ended up talking about a number of key issues during the course of his campaign, including his two televised debate appearances. Now, without warning, he’s abruptly dropping out. So what’s going on?

Jay Inslee appeared on MSNBC tonight and said all the right things about why he’s ending his campaign. He’s achieved his goal of forcing climate change closer to the core of the Democratic primary narrative. So why not keep it going? After all, another round of debates is coming up.

Although there is a higher qualification threshold for the third round of debates, earlier this week it was widely reported that Jay Inslee was on track to meet the requirements. Sure, his poll numbers are close to zero percent, but that’s true of half the Democratic candidates in the race. So why drop out how?

Inslee didn’t specifically say as much, but we think it’s fairly obvious why he chose to drop out today. Donald Trump has spent the past twenty-four hours reminding us that he’s a criminal madman who has delusions of becoming the leader of Israel and Greenland, among other horrifying things.

There’s too much at stake for this many non-viable candidates to be clogging up the Democratic primary race, when the focus should be on the relative handful of candidates whose poll numbers point to an actual chance at being the nominee. It looks like Inslee realized today that it’s time for the “zero percent” candidates to get off the debate stage. For that we commend him – and we hope the other completely non-viable candidates take a hint accordingly.