Eric Swalwell says he is confident that Mitch McConnell won’t be around to nuke gun control bills after the next election cycle, but the California Democrat has also just admitted that some of his own 2020 ambitions — the ones involving the Oval Office — are no longer realistic.
Just two days before Swalwell dropped his presidential primary bid, the Democrat boldly predicted on CNN that McConnell will be booted from office. But in the end, “Cocaine Mitch” got the last laugh.
“Good work, Swalwell,” McConnell’s staff tweeted upon hearing the news that Swalwell was departing the race.
Prediction and surrender
Despite the emotion surrounding gun violence, Swalwell’s gun-control centered campaign was always too niche — and unpopular — to generate traction for a presidential run. But on Saturday, Swalwell was confounded by a significant logistical issue related to his already unrealistic $15 billion plan to ban and buy back “assault weapons.”
“How would you pass gun control legislation, as president, if Mitch McConnell has control of the Senate?” CNN’s Ana Cabrera asked, prompting Swalwell to respond that he was not “even accepting the premise that Mitch McConnell is going to be there” in 2020.
“I used to think that, too, until I saw the Parkland generation and the Moms Demand Action and the Giffords Group and the March for Our Lives, go to the ballot box this last election and they beat 17 candidates NRA-endorsed members of Congress,” he responded.
Then, on Monday, Swalwell became the first Democrat to exit the primary race, prompting a biting response from “Team Mitch.” After languishing at the bottom of the polls for weeks, the one-issue Democrat decided to call it quits following the sudden cancellation of July 4 campaign events in New Hampshire. Despite his failure to build momentum for his presidential campaign, Swalwell said he believed he had at least succeeded in building momentum for gun control in Congress.
“Today ends our presidential campaign, but it is the beginning of an opportunity in Congress,” Swalwell said. “We have to be honest about the viability of our candidacy.”
One-dimensional candidate
Among all Democrats running for president, Swalwell was one of the hardest to take seriously, and that’s saying something. Throughout his brief but entertaining campaign, the Democrat pandered to the liberal base with anti-Trump clichés and trite sentimentalism about gun violence, but in the end, Swalwell failed to convert his notoriety as a Russiagate talking head into the basis for a successful campaign.
Swalwell’s weak debate performance last month capped off weeks of underwhelming campaigning on a narrow, unpopular platform. The Democrat was polling at 0% after his first debate, leaving his appearance at the second round in doubt. Swalwell’s low polling numbers put him on par with Colorado Senator Michael Bennet (D), Montana Governor Steve Bullock (D) and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City. His campaign also failed to indicate that it had reached the 64,000-donor threshold necessary to qualify for round two.
“Being honest with ourselves, we had to look at how much money we were raising, where we were in the polls,” Swalwell said.
Swalwell’s one-dimensional campaign was about as deep as his politics. The Democrat was mocked for his on-the-nose, extreme rhetoric, including a recent comparison between a Trump-Vladimir Putin phone call and 9/11, as well as his use of awkward, desperate one-liners. The non-existent depth of Swalwell’s political imagination was revealed again when he compared Democrats to Marvel’s Avengers super heroes at the Iowa Democratic Hall of Fame event last month. His pledge to “be bold without the bull” was met with defeaning silence from the same crowd.
The California Democrat’s bizarre self-deprecation shtick continued in his first and final primary debate. “We’re breaking up with Russia, and making up with NATO,” Swalwell said of his putative foreign policy if elected president.
With Swalwell gone, another Democrat of “Dump Trump” fame is expected to jump in the race, namely billionaire left-wing activist Tom Steyer.
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