The Post reports, “Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who pitched himself to Democratic voters as a campaign finance reformer who could win in red states, is ending his bid for the party’s presidential nomination.” In a written statement Bullock explained: “Today, I am suspending my campaign to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for President. While there were many obstacles we could not have anticipated when entering this race, it has become clear that in this moment, I won’t be able to break through to the top tier of this still-crowded field of candidates.”
To be candid, Bullock’s late entry into a crowded primary field, with low name recognition and no special fundraising sources, made his struggles unsurprising. Nor did it help that, while in person Bullock was warm, funny and quick, on TV he seemed stiff and awkward.
Finally, to a large extent Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) stole Bullock’s thunder on his top issue: trying to “rid our system of the corrupting influence of Dark Money,” as his written statement put it. Warren has launched a full-scale assault on corruption and a political system rigged in favor the rich and powerful. Whether in reference to a secret dinner for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the attempt to award the Group of Seven meeting to Trump’s own Doral property or the coziness of the Pentagon and the defense industry, Warren’s go-to phrase — “this is corruption, plain and simple” — helped her co-opt the issue.
As for the Montana governor’s future, Bullock reiterated Monday through a spokesperson that he will not run for the Montana Senate seat held by Republican Steve Daines. He should seriously rethink that position. He should consider not what he wants to do as a second act after he leaves the term-limited governorship, but what his party and country need him to do: help win control of the Senate.
Every issue he cares about, be it money in politics or trade or rural broadband or gun violence, will be impossible to address as long as Republicans, led by the self-proclaimed “Grim Reaper,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), retain the Senate majority. We have seen that no matter how many effective and urgently needed pieces of legislation the House passes (e.g., voting reform, guns, drug prices, nondiscrimination in employment for LGBTQ Americans), a Republican Senate can and will bury them. And the Senate has shown time and again it will rubber-stamp any Republican president’s executive or judicial branch nominee no matter how extreme or unqualified, while (as with Judge Merrick Garland) blocking consideration of a Democratic president’s nominees no matter how distinguished. Without the Senate majority, a Democratic president would be hobbled, and a (God forbid) second-term Trump would be free to populate the executive and judicial branches with more hacks and extremists.
As he likes to remind us, Bullock is the rare Democrat who can win in a red state that Trump carried by more than 20 points in 2016. If Bullock doesn’t run for Senate, Daines’s reelection is all but assured, and a potential pickup for Democrats is lost. With Bullock, Democrats’ chances to win the Senate improve immensely. (If they lose Alabama, they can still win the majority outright with Montana, Arizona, Colorado and Maine.)
Granted, the Senate is not a pleasant place these days. Any job that requires one to listen to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) drone on for hours (or days) at a time is not going to win awards for the best place to work in America. Nevertheless, what’s even less pleasant, and indeed downright scary, is living in a country in which Mitch McConnell controls the Senate, preventing any meaningful legislation from passing and enabling a lawless president and an intellectually and morally corrupt party to dominate our politics.
In his statement, Bullock declared, “On the difficult days, I would joke, ‘it’s worth the sacrifice because it’s only a fair shot at the American Dream and our representative democracy at stake.’ That truth remains.” Now he should prove his sincerity by running for Senate.
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