Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) announced he was dropping out of the 2020 presidential race on Wednesday. Having decided to make his presidential campaign all about climate change, Inslee found himself in a race packed to the gills with far-left climate activists just as radical as he is. He made many desperate gambits for attention, like calling President Trump a “white nationalist” (fact check: false) and hinting that he would prosecute fossil fuel executives for murder.
“This show has been so good to me, this has been sort of the bookends of my campaign,” Inslee told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “It’s become clear that I’m not going to be carrying the ball. I’m not going to be president, so tonight I’m withdrawing from the race.”
Inslee insisted he would keep fighting climate change like he had been doing for 25 years, and he did not endorse a fellow candidate in the race.
While the Washington governor made both of the first two debates, he was nowhere near qualifying for the third debate next month. He stood at an embarrassing 0.2 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
Yet on Wednesday, it seemed far from clear he was even considering dropping out. The candidate released a rural climate plan Wednesday morning.
Today, I’m proud to release my latest #ClimateMission plan, Growing Rural Prosperity.
Because in addition to Trump’s chaos trade agenda and agribusiness consolidation, rural America faces the deep and unprecedented existential threat of climate change.https://t.co/3crw0JbVVh
— Jay Inslee (@JayInslee) August 21, 2019
Inslee also tweeted about the breaking news from Brazil, that the Amazon Rainforest is suffering a devastating fire. Grasping for an earthy analogy, he called the rainforest “the planet’s lungs.”
“What’s happening in the [Amazon Rainforest] — the planet’s lungs — affects all of us. Once, American leadership might have helped stop this tragedy. But Trump doesn’t care. And his ego-driven foreign-policy-by-tweet has utterly debased our credibility on the international stage,” the governor tweeted.
What’s happening in the #AmazonRainforest — the planet’s lungs — affects all of us. Once, American leadership might have helped stop this tragedy.
But Trump doesn’t care. And his ego-driven foreign-policy-by-tweet has utterly debased our credibility on the international stage.
— Jay Inslee (@JayInslee) August 21, 2019
Inslee became the third candidate to pull out of the race, following Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) — who faced a serious primary challenger — and former Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), who may be mulling a run against Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). Washington State does not have a U.S. Senate election next year, but Inslee will be running for reelection.
The climate alarmist message will still resonate through the 2020 Democratic race, don’t you fear. Democrats will not remember that alarmist predictions like the sinking of the Maldives failed to come true, and they will continue to push for the silencing of their critics on this issue. They will continue to dismiss the astronomical cost of the Green New Deal, attack consumer goods like bacon and air conditioning, and ceaselessly repeat the utterly false claim that 97 percent of scientists agree that humans are making the earth boil.
The part that annoys Jay Inslee most is the simple fact that all of this would have happened without him. He didn’t even make a dent in the race.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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